University of Montana University of Montana

ScholarWorks at University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School

2000

Antonin Artaud| The essence of revolt Antonin Artaud| The essence of revolt

Kathleen C. Irwin The University of Montana

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd

Let us know how access to this document benefits you.

Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Irwin, Kathleen C., "Antonin Artaud| The essence of revolt" (2000). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1572. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1572

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact scholarworks@mso.umt.edu.

Maureen and Mike

MANSFIELD LIBRARY

Hie University of iVIONTxA^A

Permission is granted by the author to reproduce :his matenal in its entirety, provided that this material is used for schoiariy purposes and is properly cited m published works and reports.

** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature

Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission

**

Author's Signature

Date n ^ o o o

Any copymg for commercial purposes or financiai gam may be undertaken only with the author's explicit consent.

ANTONIN ARTAUD: THE ESSENCE OF REVOLT

by Kathleen C. Irwin

B.A. University of Montana, 1991

presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Montana

July 2000

Approved by:

Chairperson

Dean, Graduate School

Date

UMI Number EP35848

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,

a note will indicate the deletion.

UMT Diss&r'faHtkif) PkjbltshffiQ

UMI EP35848

Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author

Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against

unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code

ProOuesf

ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway

P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346

Irwin, Kathleen C. M.A. July 2000 French

Examining the vision of poet and theatrical theoretician Antonin Artaud in his collection of essays Le Theatre et son double and Supporting the thesis of a link between Artaud's poetic genius, his theories about culture and language and his mental illness and Showing the application of Artaud's vision in his Theater of Cruelty project

Director; Christopher Anderson

The theme of revolt is at the heart of Artaud's hfe and work. Artaud's primary goal was to liberate the power of human thought and the energies of human existence and passion.

Artaud saw the theatrical stage as the site of the reactivation and the deployment of the forces of life through the art of the mise en scene Artaud never wavered in his rejection of the accepted norms of classical, modem and contemporary theater. His essays on theater and culture attack what he perceived as a tyrannical western ideology that imposed its dominant cultural and aesthetic structures and a supremacy of the text on all other aspects of the theatrical production. His production as a writer both about and of theater, his poetry and his essays, as well as his exploration of other cultures reveal his lifelong dedication to the creation of a new form of theatrical expression through a modem revival of the ancient art of theater His study of the Balinese theater and his journey to Mexico to immerse himself in the culture of the Tarahumara Indians were motivated by this project. Artaud's theories about theater and culture are expressed primarily in his collection of

articles and essays, Le Theatre et son double His vision of a Theater of Cruelty was showcased in his play Les Cenci. Linked to Artaud's vision of true theater that might produce a metaphysical

transformation of culture was his personal struggle against a mental illness that prevented him from experiencing spiritual wholeness. Van Gogh, le suicide de la societe provides evidence to support this premise. The forced compliance of the mental patient mirrors the repression of all members of

society by the structures that function to engender conformity to social norms. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari explore the development and the imposition of repressive social structures in the modem capitalistic system in L'Anti-Oedipe. Artaud's struggle to define himself independently from the artificial structure of family relationships imposed by the Oedipal interpretation is highlighted in their book. Deleuze and Guattari give additional evidence that Artaud's illness and his artistic vision were interconnected.

ii

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ii

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE Theater and its double 7

CHAPTER TWO Sources of Genius and Madness 33

CHAPTER THREE The Theater of Cruelty 61

CONCLUSION 102

WORKS CONSULTED 106

iii

Introduction

The three revolts of Antonin Artaud.

The theme of revolt is at the heart of Artaud's life and work. In his

writing on theatrical production (including film) as well as his participation

in it as an actor and a director of theatrical troups, he never wavered in his

rejection of the accepted norms of classical, modem and contemporary

theater. His essays on theater and culture attack what he perceived as a

tyrannical western ideology that imposed its dominant cultural and aesthetic

structures and a supremacy of the text on all other aspects of the theatrical

production. His production as a writer both about and of theater, his poetry

and his essays, as well as his exploration of other cultures reveal his lifelong

dedication to the creation of a new form of theatrical expression through a

modem revival of the ancient art of theater. His particular conception of

theater is one that emphasizes the power of gesture, movement, signs, the

word as magical hieroglyph and all other possible tools of the theatrical

scene. Such tools allow, he thought, the forces of life and what he

perceived as tme culture to resume an overt role in the stmcturing of reality

In Artaud's vision, this could be achieved onstage through the action of the

1

play and the staging, resulting in the spiritual transformation of spectators

and actors alike.

The world he sought to transform existed both on stage and off, both

in his exterior experiences and in his interior reality. Artaud's primary goal

was to liberate the power of human thought and the energies of human

existence and passion.

In examining his theories for an 'active theater', I see the essential

action as an excavation at the roots of humanity with the goal of releasing

the essential forces of nature, particularly those which modem culture seeks

to contain and even obliterate, such as fear, chaos, incest, magic, and

madness.

Artaud saw the theatrical stage as the site of the reactivation and the

deployment of the forces of life through the art of the 'mise en scene' He

dedicated his life to the development of a theatrical production that, instead

of presenting a representation of reality through text and psychological

script, sought to release the magical forces of the word as a tool of

incantation.

His study of the Balinese theater and his journey to Mexico to

immerse himself in the culture of the Tarahumara Indians were motivated

by this project. He saw in the former the application of a theatrical art that

2

acts on the spectator through the craft of staging and in the latter a culture

that existed in a state of spiritual exaltation in direct connection to what he

repeatedly described as the magical, or metaphysical forces of life.

Critics who interpret Artaud's revolt through his theories about

theater alone fall short of the truth of Artaud's rebellion. He envisaged a

revolution of culture and a spiritual unification through the release of

powers of thought that, in his view, had been enslaved by the restrictions of

a culture that was afraid of its own shadows. If the double of theater was

life, the double of life was found in those shadows whose transformative

powers did not cease to exist simply because our culture ignored them.

Linked to Artaud's assertion that the rise of the supremacy of the text

in modem theater signaled the demise of true theater, and his resistance to

the restrictions of western culture on human expression, was a third area of

revolt in the arena of the self. Artaud fought against what he experienced as

the insurrection of his own mind against his being. His personal struggle

was both a revolt against a mental illness that prevented him from

experiencing spiritual wholeness and against the symbolic and cultural

systems which he experienced as barriers to self expression. He defined his

mental disfunction as the inability to unify his thoughts and his essential

3

self with the symbolic. He could not define himself as a subject through

language and its symbolic systems.

Yet today our understanding of how he conceptualized an alternative

mode of expression is limited to the written word. His theories about

theater and culture are expressed primarily in his collection of articles and

essays, Le Theatre et son double His vision of a Theater of Cruelty was

showcased in his play Les Cenci. This play, which closed in 1935 after

only 17 shows, was unsuccessful in raising the funds or the interest to allow

him to continue his project.

Artaud's genius was linked to his madness in that his mental illness

provided one source of his vision. The acuity of his perception and the

intensity of his revolt were due in part to his own struggle with mental

illness, as well as the harsh lessons learned from the restrictions society

placed on him. Artaud sought to revolutionalize a culture that he saw as

bewitched by the repressive dominance of a symbolic system cut off from

the forces and things it represents. His resistance to modem cultural values

and aesthetics took place in all areas of his life and was tragically restrained

with a violence that equaled, if it did not surpass, that of the revolt.

The harsh backlash of society against both Artaud's artistic genius

and his mental instability instructed him further in how the tyranny of the

4

dominant discourse permeated all aspects of culture. The period of

internment in asylums between 1937 and 1946 was a battle of self defense

for his liberty and very existence. After the failure of Les Cenci, he had

abandoned the theater for the stage of real life, where he experienced in the

raw the Theater of Cruelty.

Artaud survived the asylum because of or despite the fact that he

never stopped resisting the discourses of power and repression. The forced

compliance of the mental patient mirrors the repression of all members of

society by the structures that function to engender conformity to social

norms. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari explore the development and the

imposition of such structures in the modem capitalistic system in their book

L'Anti-Oedipe. The Oedipal interpretation of family and social structure at

the basis of Freudian and Lacanian theory is the primary target of their

critique of restrictive cultural systems. The frequent references in L'Anti-

Oedipe to Artaud's personal, artistic and cultural revolt highlight the poet's

stmggle to define himself independently from the artificial structure of

family relationships imposed on the individual and on society by the

Oedipal interpretation. I will point out some of the parallels between the

Anti-Oedipe critique and Artaud's rebellion against the definition of the

parameters of self by a family stmcture that also bows to the tyranny of the

5

symbolic. Additionally, Deleuze and Guattari give evidence that Artaud's

personal struggle for self, his revolt against culture and his artistic revolt are

intertwined in his life and creative production.

Artaud's rejection of the predominant norms of modem theater is

paired with a revolt against the repressive discourse of culture. Both are

voiced in the dissenting cry of the (always essentially isolated) revoke.

In the first chapter I will explore Artaud's theories about theater and culture

as described in Le Theatre et son double. In Chapter two I will examine the

connections between Artaud's genius and his mental illness and to show

how Artaud's intellectual force was linked to his spiritual condition.

Finally, in the third chapter, I will consider Artaud's theatrical principles

and techniques within the framework of a theater whose stagecraft would

have an organically transformative effect on the participants. I will then

examine their application in his Theater of Cruelty project. Through the

examination of reviews of his major productions, I hope to convey a sense

of both the intensity of Artaud's vision and the controversy surrounding his

legacy.

6

CHAPTER ONE

THEATER AND ITS DOUBLE

Theater and life-life and culture.

In the world of Antonin Artaud, theater is not separate from life.

Herein lies the essential meaning of the title of his collection of essays on

theater and culture, Theatre et son double For Artaud, life is the mirror of

theater, just as the creative forces of theater 'double' the transformative

powers of life.

Life inexorably works its powers on the living, just as in 'true'

theater, (as in Artaud's vision for a Theater of Cruelty) the action of

metaphysical powers invoked by the art and the craft of the play's direction

must transform the spectator Artaud uses the term 'cruelty' to describe the

inescapable forces of both life and theater. Cruelty resides in the necessity

that motivates all action. Artaud illustrates this energy poetically, yet also

literally, with the image of the plague. The plague is an irrepressible force

of life that is both destructive and transformative, purifying and terrible.

Like life (and theater) it ends in either healing transformation or death ("Le

Theatre et la peste", 46).

7

For Artaud, in the same way that the metaphysical, active forces of

theater and life were a reflection of one another, life and authentic culture

were one and the same. When natural powers were unrestricted in working

their transformative magic, then authentic culture emerged. When through

the application of the staging craft the fearsome forces of life are unleashed

on the spectator, true theater is taking place. Artaud rejects what he sees as

false forms of both culture and theater, resulting from the perversion of life

forces. True culture retreats, divided from nature by the imposition of an

illusory representational culture, and eventually perishes. An imposter

theater replaces the 'active theater' through subjugation of the 'mise en

scene' to the text. Just as our essential selves are not a manifestation of the

structures that control social reality, in the same way the active force of true

theater is not evoked by the scripts that are read on stage.

The symbolic split.

Artaud thought that true theater and culture were linked by the

metaphysical forces of life. The split between human intellectual

experience and the knowledge of those forces results in both false culture

and theater, which are reduced realities in a universe of potentially infinite

experiences. The double of the schizophrenic cultural split between nature

8

and intellect is mirrored in Artaud's experience of self. Alain Virmaux

observes this connection between the artist's theories and the artist's life

when he states in Antonin Artaud et le theatre •

On commence a pressentir que le theatre, pour Artaud, c'est assurement beaucoup plus que le theatre...Peut-etre le theatre n'est-il pas la seule cle qui permette d'acceder a son univers mental; du moins la tiendra-t-on pour une cle decisive (16).

In the same way that Artaud fought against the reductive split in art

and in culture, he struggled vehemently against what he experienced as his

inability to unite self and thought into a subjective whole. Through all his

forms of production Artaud sought a way to ease his suffering at his

inablility to express thought and a solution to the insurmountable problem

of the defining of self (Paule Thevenin, preface. Theatre et son double ).

His failure to access a whole self through language and his efforts to liberate

the power of his own thoughts from within a system of aesthetic norms

aimed at reducing natural potential found expression in an extensive

critique of that culture. The essential element of this critique was that

western civilization itself was schizophrenic. It validated perception based

on an intellect that was divided from its spiritual and metaphysical

intelligences and thus refused its entirety It crushed those who sought the

knowledge to liberate their own shadow powers. Artaud thought that the

9

cure for such a culture lay in what could be described as a true shock

therapy, administered through a living theater, an idea which he pursued in

his Theater of Cruelty.

Artaud described the potentially fatal split between life and culture in

western civilization, and indeed his own struggle with his inability to ever

fully unite thought and word:

Si le signe de I'epoque est la confusion, je vois a la base de cette confusion une rupture entre les choses, et les paroles, les idees, les signes qui en sont la representation (Theatre et son double. 12).

The split between things, and the words, ideas and signs that

represent them, in Artaud's view, created a rupture between the spiritual and

the material. This division created an inability to access the forces of

thought through the things that surround us~those things that life creates,

and that we create. Thought was subjugated to the symbolic system itself,

and its power was reduced to its intellectual manifestation —the idea. This

theme of the relationship between thought and word was a central

preoccupation in Artaud's life and work, through his experience of culture,

theater and self/madness. For Artaud, thoughts were things. They had a

force which like the plague could not be denied. When restricted, or not

directed or acknowledged, this force erupted in unexpected and often

unwanted ways.

10

The signs of exaltation

The indications of a schizophrenic culture may be seen in the

civilization that idolizes cultural production and immortalizes

the authors of this production. Such a civilization develops from a culture

held hostage to the specularizing gaze and from the imprisonment of poetic

forces in static symbols that are no longer capable of evoking the force

behind their signs. Artaud identified as art this freezing of true culture in

false representations.

Artaud stated that in authentic cultures, there was no art; that is, there

were no purely aesthetic forms of representation since signs always served

as access points to the powers they represented. Art in western cultures

could no longer give access to our gods who were petrified as statues in

pantheons. In contrast, the function of totems in 'primitive' cultures was to

activate cultural hieroglyphs and release the powers of nature, or the divine.

These were active cultures, not possessing or not interested in the aspects of

western culture that encased the metaphysical power of thought—the key to

cultural exaltation—in the steel trap of intellect:

C'est une infection de I'humain qui nous gate des idees qui auraient du demeurer divines; car loin de croire le sumaturel, le divin invente par I'homme je pense que c'est 1'intervention mdllenaire de I'homme qui a fini par nous corrompre le divin

11

( "Le Theatre et la culture", 13).

Artaud also identified these authentic cultures as magic cultures since

they have direct access to the forces of poetry, magic, and divine life.

Words as the touchstones of culture have the magical quality of incantation.

The cultures that possess the knowledge of words and things as objects of

power, rather than false illusions,^ are worlds 'in which stone comes alive

because it has been struck in the necessary way' ("Le Theatre et la culture,

7). They are cultures in organic connection with the forces of nature, and

thus they are vitally awakened to life:

...le monde des civilises organiques, je veux dire dont les organes vitaux aussi sortent de leur repos, ce monde humain entre en nous, il participe a la danse des dieux, sans se retoumer ni regarder en arriere, sous peine de devenir, comme nous-memes, des statues effritees de sel ( "Le Theatre et la culture", 16).

His fascination with the Balinese theater is keyed to the idea of a

theater capable of awakening the gods through nature. This is a theater

'capable of reintroducing on stage a hint of the great metaphysical fear that

forms the basis of all ancient theater' ("La mise en scene et la

metaphysique", 65).

12

Artaud's exploration of the Tarumahara culture in Mexico was a

quest to find an authentic culture that used these signs in everyday life, in a

living theater of cruelty He saw in the rites of the Mexican cultures the

principles that might provide a model for a theater based on the direct

necessity of life, one that could release the human sensibility from its

subjugation to the intellect.

Ce qui importe, c'est que, par des moyens surs, la sensibilite soit mise en etat de perception plus approfondie et plus fine, et c'est la I'objet de la magie et des rites ( "Le Theatre de la cruaute", 141).

Afraid of our own shadow(s)

The double of the age of reason is the age of fear The double of

illumination is shadow. The double of science is (black) magic. The title

Theater and its Double , in addition to suggesting the connection between

the potential force of theater and the undeniable forces of life, evokes the

image of the shadow as a doubling form. These hidden forces are the

shadow of western culture which reveres positivism and reason. Artaud's

shadow reality doubled the rational, material one and revealed itself only

cautiously to avoid being reduced to the negative half of a binary cultural

' These he distinguishes from 'true' illusions, or dreams. See "Le Theatre de

13

perspective. Artaud stated that the double of theater, the revolutionary force

of life, was dangerous to cartesian thought processes because it was

undefinable within that framework and resistant to such rational analysis. It

was:

...dangereuse et typique, ou les Principes, comme les dauphins, quand ils ont montre leur tete s'empressent de rentrer dans I'obscurite des eaux ( "Le Theatre alchimique", 74).

According to Artaud, western culture sought the clarity of rational

ideas above all other knowledge and thereby pushed the true force of these

ideas into hiding under the direct glare of man's reason. The disease that

afflicted western culture and civilization was terrible in its symptoms and

ultimately fatal in its effects since it divorced life from existence. Yet the

cause of the illness was the victim itself. Culture was dying because it had

cut itself off from all the forces of life, from a metaphysical awareness of

what it meant to be alive. The occidental world had in fact reduced life to

culture, 'reduced to nothing but the inert copy' of its former self ("Le

Theatre alchimique", 74). Artaud wrote about the reduction of pre-

Renaissance theater from a space for the transmission of metaphysical truths

to 'a purely descriptive theater that recounts psychology' ( "En finir avec les

chefs-d'oeuvre', 119). Artaud also described western theater as one which

la cruaute, 141

14

had the characteristic of habitually 'reducing the unknown to the known,

that is to say, to the commonplace and ordinary' ( "En finir avec les chefs-

d'oeuvre', 119). Artaud's situating of the end of the age of magic for

European culture at the beginning of the age of classicism was reinforced

when he described the characteristic of modem theater to which he most

vigorously objected, the attempt to clarify the essence of the idea through

rational thought and language;

Et en opposition avec cette fagon de voir, fa9on qui me parait a moi tout occidentale ou plutot latine, c'est-a-dire butee...On va me demander sans doute de preciser ce qu'il y a de latin dans cette fa9on de voir opposee a la mienne. Ce qu'il y a de latin, c'est ce besoin de se servir des mots pour exprimer des idees qui soient claires. Car pour moi les idees claires sont au theatre comme partout ailleurs , des idees mortes et terminees ("La mise en scene et la metaphysique, 61, italics mine).

In Artaud's view, our culture was intensely afraid of 'a life unfolding

entirely under the sign of true magic' ("Le Theatre et la culture", 14). (Yet

that we fill our eyes with the simulacra of magic on the silver screen

perhaps attests to a deeper desire). This fear, and the desire to abolish fear

itself from our lives, resulted in a rejection of the dark, the shadow of the

light, the illumination of the positivist modem culture. Western man was

thus reduced to the clarity of his own reason.

15

Philosopher's gold

It was the occult forces of life that Artaud wanted to manipulate on

stage to effect a transformation of all participants, without attempting to

define the mysteries in the positivist light of psychological/scientific

analysis. He developed this aim in his essay "Le Theatre alchimique."

Artaud's goal was a metaphysical connection between mind and

matter, and he sought the tools for a transformation in the occult craft of

alchemy and in a theater of signs. The ancient practitioners of these arts

could manipulate the third element, the transformative energy necessary to

create the 'philosophical gold' of spiritualized matter. Artaud's vision was

of a craft of the mise en scene that might manipulate the occult forces of

life on stage in the manner of the alchemical masters. Because of this literal

interpretation, it would be false to call alchemy a mere metaphor for his

vision of theater

The premise of the alchemical transformation resulting in

spiritualized matter resounds in his vision of an 'active theater' that was to

be the Theater of Cruelty His vision was of 'definitive and transcendant

aspect of alchemical theater' that would contain 'the spiritual means to

decant and transfuse matter, to evoke the burning and decisive transfusion

of matter by spirit' ("Le Theatre alchimique", 79).

16

Helmar Schramm gives a description of the nature of alchemy in his

article "The open book of alchemy in/on the mute language of theatre" that

explains the metaphysical transformation that was the goal of the

alchemists.

In 1677, in La Rochelle, a book was published which stands out remarkably in the labyrinth of alchemist literature. All the different stages of alchemical practices are described in it, as are the most indispensible materials and instruments and the processes for refining substances. The peculiar procedure for manufacturing gold is described in detail—with reference to the gods (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mercury), to the powers of nature and, not least, to the transformation that is to take place in the alchemist himself during the working process. This complexity can be explained by the fact that the 'real alchemists' are not concerned simply with the refining of metal. As the 'art of seeking for gold', the 'art of crea­tion', as the 'hermetic-chemical art of the adepts', alchemy sharply distinguishes itself from the 'gold-cooking addiction' which was widespread until well into the eighteenth century. Alchemy sought a 'philosophical gold'. All laboratory experiments were part of a practical philosophizing which circled around the cosmological interaction of microcosm and macrocosm (3-4).

This description highlights the aspects of alchemy that Artaud saw as

representative of the true theatrical process: powers of nature evoked;

tranformation of all participants; metaphysical unity achieved.

Like the term 'alchemy', 'philosophical gold' should also not be

mistaken for a metaphor. It should rather be interpreted literally in its

implications for the transformative powers of both alchemy and the theater

17

envisaged. Artaud viewed these arts as economies which allowed the free

circulation beween the spiritual, metaphysical and material realities.

In the elements of motion and movement in concrete space of the

alchemical process, Schramm points out another parallel between theater

and the occult sciences, that of the importance of the physical art of staging.

Alchemical transformation required an intimate knowledge of the signs and

motions that would be combined to put into effect the creation of

(meta)physical gold. Schramm quotes an anonymous writer from 1704

The art of governing the alchemical fire of the conversion of metals too was oriented by this principle of motion. "The lowly chemists boil water [...] in fire, but the hermetic philosophers boil fire in water", is a brief, but paradoxically elegant description of this central process whose manifold references to the theatricality inherent in human behavior merit closer observation (5).

The contrast between the older occult craft of alchemy and the

modem physical science of chemistry was centered in the idea that the Ages

of Enlightenment and Reason signaled a turning point away from the

spirituality of human thought. With the development of modem science,

the realms of the scientific and the spiritual became strictly divided, and

superstition and myth were eliminated. As Schramm points out, with this

development, reason purified the mind of it shadows. Artaud described a

new age of clarity situated at the beginning of the Renaissance as the

historical moment when the full potential of life was reduced by this

18

purification. The resulting loss of perception heightens the aspect of irony

which permeates our "age of clarity" Artaud thought that western culture

was 'slipping toward suicide' ("Le theatre et la peste", 47).

According to Schramm, along with the goal of metaphysical

transformation of matter, and the power of motion in physical space in the

alchemical process, another parallel between Artaud's true theater and the

alchemical arts is that the occult nature of alchemy did not survive the

advent of the printed word. The mysterious, alchemical formulas of signs,

incantations and decantations lost their force when explicated on the printed

page;

Artaud explicitly bases [his] alternative theatre model on an enigmatic ancient science, whose fate was sealed by the light of the Enlightenment (3)...With the invention of printing, alchemy as an oral culture found itself at a crucial turning point. In a way, it is only now that the Open Book of Alchemy comes into existence. But from the beginning, this book was in sharp conflict with the reading culture of the printed word. And this conflict, emerging in the sixteenth century, escalated increasingly until the demise of classical alchemy in the eighteenth century...it is precisely this irreconcilable conflict between the alchemist cosmos and the Gutenberg Galaxy that leads to that theatrical priciple of alchemy whose trace is to be found in Artaud's manifestos (5).

Artaud saw the subjugation of the art of staging to the written text as

fatal to the true purpose of theater. For Artaud, this was another aspect of

European culture, illuminated by the light of reason, that caused the

disappearance of true theater

19

Schramm affirms the scope of Artaud's cultural revolt as follows:

Nor was Artaud concerned with the alchemy of the market place and the golden gallows upon which the alchemist frauds ended, clothed in tinsel shrouds. The allusion in Artaud's manifestos refer to the principle of alchemy which led to its confrontation with writing culture. Linked to this para­digm, however, are standards of rationality according to which western progress in general orients itself, and whose institution-lalized self-evidence has to be questioned now. Artaud's search for a theatre which is other can be understood as a radical critique which goes far beyond questions of art (7).

As culture was purified by the modem science of chemistry, the

mysteries of the dark sciences were rendered inaccessible. Schramm states

that the "dark' poetic surplus in alchemy...was systematically censored' (7).

Thus the possibility of a 'bodily and poetic transformation' was lost (7).

Artaud, poet, revolutionary and anarchist, always called for the necessity of

resisting such a reduction:

...rejeter les limitations habituelles de I'homme et des pouvoirs de I'homme, et a rendre infinies les frontieres de ce qu'on appelle la realite ("Le theatre et la culture", 19).

Poetry

Artaud described the loss of poetry in culture in the following way

'la poesie qui n'est plus en nous et que nous ne parvenons plus a trouver

dans les choses.' Clearly Artaud was not describing the written form that

maintained its dominant position in contemporary theater, but rather the loss

20

of a force. Poetic energy was not dependent on the written form. Artaud

affirmed this distinction in "Le Theatre et la culture"

On peut bruler la bibliotheque d'Alexandrie. Au-dessus et en dehors des papyrus, il y a des forces: on nous enlevera pour quelque temps la faculte de retrouver ces forces, on ne supprimera pas leur energie (15).

In "En finir avec les chefs d'oeuvre", Artaud attacked both modem

ignorance of the 'thinking energy, the vital force' of poetry, and the

veneration of the written text (121). Underneath the poetic form there is a

poetic force which we have denied (121). He quotes Rene Guenon

in "La Mise en scene et la metaphysique" to describe this deliberate

ignorance: "notre fa^on antipoetique et tronquee de considerer les principes

(en dehors de I'etat spirituel energique et massif qui leur correspond)"(66).

Yet the massive bottom of spiritual energy ignored as we lived on the tip of

the iceberg, in the intellect, made itself known:

la poesie qui n'est plus en nous et que nous ne parvenons plus a retrouver dans les choses ressort, tout a coup, par le mauvais cote des choses, et jamais on n'aura vu tant de crimes, dont la bizarrerie gratuite ne s'explique que par notre impuissance a posseder la vie (13).

One purpose for Artaud's Theater of Cruelty would be to reclaim the forces

of poetry that otherwise ran rampant with inexplicable violence through

society

21

...une sorte d'atroce poesie qui s'exprime par des actes bizarres ou les alterations du fait de vivre demontrent que I'intensite de la vie est intacte, et qu'il suffirait de la mieux diriger ("Le Theatre et la culture", 14).

The poetic anarchy of the plague and of other natural disasters.

Artaud contended that, as a culture, our vulnerability to the violence

of the forces of life was due to our refusal of life in its entirety. Outwardly

we had achieved a distance from life through a pursuit of progress and

modernization and the cultural discourses based on the dominance of

science and the supremacy of reason over other forms of knowledge;

inwardly such distancing was made possible by a collective fear of

unconscious desires. Western culture had purified, in the true puritanical

sense, what was dark in culture. But for Artaud the cost of choking off the

natural life force was great:

On peut dire maintenant que toute vraie liberte est noire et se confond immanquablement avec la liberte du sexe qui est noire elle aussi sans que Ton sache tres bien pourquoi. Car il y a longtemps que L'Eros platonicien, le sens genesique, la liberte de la vie, a disparu sous le revetement sombre de la Libido que Ton identifie avec tout ce qu'il y a de sale, d'abject, d'infamant dans le fait de vivre, de se precipiter avec une vigueur naturelle et impure, avec une force toujours renouvelee vers la vie ( "Le theatre et la peste", 45).

22

Clearly Artaud wished to free himself from the disprobatory

judgement of his culture. In his reference to the psychoanalytic term libido,

he showed his understanding of the cultural order that defined good and

bad, healthy and insane. The voice of reason was familiar to Artaud, who

was marked as operating outside the boundaries of reason. Derrida

identifies that voice in "Cogito et histoire de la folie" as the enforcer of

social order:

...le langage de la raison, qui est celui de I'Ordre (c'est-a-dire a la fois du systeme de I'objectivite ou de la rationalite universelle, dont la psychiatric veut etre I'expression... (56).

If Artaud sought liberty instead of order, and truth instead of reason,

his sources were in the ancient knowledge of the natural truths, and his

chosen site of resistance was not located in the realm of reason, but in the

place of all possibility, unlimited by either the symbolic or the imaginary

orders, the Real. Helga Finter asserts that Artaud places his Theater of

Cruelty in the realm of the Real (4-5). For Artaud, the image of the plague

expressed the potential violence of the relentless push to liberate all truths

from the confines of reason. Nature would necessarily revolt against the

repressive forces of false culture, seeking an 'absolute' state of liberty

Et quand nous nous croyons arrives au paroxysme de I'horreur, du sang, des lois bafouees, de la poesie enfin que sacre la revolte, nous sommes obliges d'aller encore plus loin dans un vertige que

23

rien ne peut arreter ( "Le Theatre et la peste", 42).

Artaud used the term "cruelty" to describe true theater as well as life,

showing the absolute necessity for both to break from all limitations. The

connection between poetry and revolt is also clear The anarchic forces of

poetry would always tend toward a state of chaos, the breakup of

conventional form.

For Artaud, expressing what is impossible because 'not definitely

locatable' (Finter, 5) clearly meant absolute freedom, both from the

repressive forces of the social order and also from his own state of

suffering. What is unimaginable, impossible and not locatable about the

human psyche is the Real. Artaud operated in the realm of the impossible in

that he sought to unite the symbolic with the Real and find the unity of his

essential self. Artaud's writings clearly express the importance of ritual

cultures and the teachings of the ancient myths in opening human sensibility

to metaphysical truths of the universe in this process of transformation and

sublimation.

From violent beginnings...

Western culture gives much (hypocritical) attention to opposing

violence, yet paradoxically, by battling chaos and evil, we deny life. Artaud

24

described such opposition as the suicide of culture. Most difficult was to

accept death not as a finality but as another door The collective

unconscious of western culture is obsessed with death and violence. It is

easy to spot such preoccupation from the selection on the movie marquee.

Perhaps this obsession with destruction on film is a result of a culture that

rejects the truths of nature, yet retains the subconscious knowledge of a lost

equilibrium. Artaud explained that the preoccupation with the telling of all

aspects of the tale, both light and dark, has been with us since the

beginning, or at least since the beginning of the great Myths.

Et c'est ainsi que tous les grands Myths sont noirs et qu'on ne peut imaginer hors d'une atmosphere de carnage, de torture, de sang verse, toutes les magnifiques Fables qui racontent aux foules le premier partage sexuel et le premier carnage d'essences qui apparaissent dans la creation ("Le theatre et la peste", 45).

Artaud referred to the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries to illustrate

the natural cycles of destruction and creation. The violence and cruelty

central to these stories were for Artaud representative of the essential

cruelty of nature. The Orphic Mysteries were the secret religious rites in

worship of Dionysus based on myth of Dionysus Zagreus. In the myth,

Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, was devoured by the Titans to please

Hera, sister and wife of Zeus. Zeus destroyed the Titans by lightning, and

25

from their ashes sprang the race of men, making man part evil (Titan) and

part divine (Zagreus). Zeus swallowed Zagreus' heart and from it was bom

the new Dionysus Zagreus. The Eleusinian Mysteries were rites that enacted

the principal religious mysteries of ancient Greece, which dealt with the

legends of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus, and symbolized the tuming

of the seasons, with the decay of winter and the renewal of spring, and

assured a happy afterlife to those who were initiates.

In reference to the Eleusinian Mysteries, Artaud stated.

On nous apprend que les Mysteres d'Eleusis se bomaient a mettre en scene un certain nombre de verites morales. Je crois plutot qu'ils devaient mettre en scene des projections et des precipitations de conflits, des luttes indescriptibles de principes, prises sous cet angle vertigineux et glissant ou toute verite se perd en realisant la fusion inextricable et unique de I'abstrait et du concret, et je pense que par des musiques d'instruments et des notes, des combinaisons de couleurs et de formes dont nous avons perdu jusqu'a I'idee, ils devaient, d'une part: combler cette nostalgic de la beaute pure dont Platon a bien du trouver au moins une fois en ce monde la realisation complete, sonore, ruisselante et depouillee, et d'autre part: resoudre par des conjonctions inimaginables et etranges pour nos cerveaux d'hommes encore eveilles, resoudre ou meme annihiler tous les conflits produits par I'antagonisme de la matiere et de F esprit, de I'idee et de la forme, du concret et de I'abstrait, et fondre toutes les apparences en une expression unique qui devait etre pareille a I'or spiritualise ( "Le Theatre alchimique", 79-80).

The archetypal signs in these myths act on the human psyche to

release a profound knowledge of life. The bringing to consciousness of this

26

knowledge has a transformative power that is ultimately (r)evolutionary.

The conflicts resolved are moral only in the sense that for Artaud, morality

was a metaphysical state of cosmic unity These were the essential conflicts

in human nature resulting from the separation between spirituality and

materiality For Artaud, western culture had neither the rites nor the

teachings to convey the mysterious truths of the universe, nor to attain the

unity of mind, spirit and matter that for Artaud was the essence of platonic

beauty

The great reduction, or "Antonin Artaud, diet guru?"

Perhaps the most important term in Artaud's analysis of the malady

of western culture is 'reductive.' In his writings he showed many aspects

of a process whose result is the loss of life in culture. Western culture had

reduced knowledge to intellectual reason, anihilated the magical, the

spiritual, and the divine through scientific classification, closed down the

portals to the forces of life by worshipping representations, flooded the dark

and fecund spaces of the psyche with the light of reason. According to

Artaud the restraint of unlimited possibility by controlled reality had

reduced chaos to order Moreover, by seeking to put down anarchy,

modem culture had destroyed poetry. The dark forces of life, like sexuality.

27

evil, the unkown, had been redefined in moral value systems as that which

should be repressed. Furthermore, the loss of true culture (life) had its

corollary in the loss of its double, theater The ancient art of theater whose

masters knew the incantatory power of the word and used it to bring about

metaphysical transformation of all participants has been replaced by a

psychological theater with an audience of voyeuristic spectators.

The primacy of the script over all other aspects in the Western

theatrical production is a symptom of cultural reduction. This is a theater

whose importance was focused entirely on the elucidation of the character-

... [il] ne s'agit plus dans la vie que de savoir si nous baisons bien, si nous ferons la guerre ou si nous serons assez laches pour faire la paix, comment nous nous accommodons de nos petites angoisses morales, et si nous prendrons conscience de nos "complexes" (ceci dit en langage savant) ou bien si nos "complexes" nous etoufferont ("La mise en scene et la meta-physique", 62).

Such a critique was clearly aimed at the prominent artistic and

scientific figures of his time. There was a sweeping dismissal of the

playwrights such as Jean Giraudoux who wrote about the political conflicts

of contemporary society. Artaud was infuriated by what he viewed as the

preoccupation with the petty psycho-social encounters of humanity that

formed the basis for the artistic expression of his time. He rejected as well

28

the psychological terminology that had become fixed in everyday language

(a reflection of the far reaching influence Sigmund Freud has had on

modem cultural thought). For Artaud, the positivist culture seemed

purposefully blinded to alternative manifestations of knowledge, and

fascistic in its attempt to eliminate them.

At the start of the essay, "La mise en scene et la metaphysique",

Artaud described the primitive painting "Lotte's Daughters" by the 16th

century Dutch painter Lucas van Ley den. Artaud evaluated the painting as

if it were a theatrical production of what he would call true theater. As with

the ancient myths, the images of the painting opened the mind to the

'religious and the metaphysical' (49). He applauded the intensity of the

transformational effect on the viewer and the minimal emphasis on social

issues in the themes of the painting. Artaud had the same goal for a new

theater that could distance itself from the concerns of the ego. Modem

theater and the stmctures of social order it reflected were unequivocally

worthless:

...cet etat de choses dans lequel nous vivons, et qui est a detmire, a detmire avec application et mechancete, sur tous les plans et a tous les degres ou il gene le libre exercice de la pensee '(71).

29

Artaud's purpose for total revolution had always been absolute liberty of

thought. As may be expected, in pursuing this goal, the creator of the

Theater of Cruelty did not shy away from the violence of his emotions;

Or je dis que I'etat social actuel est inique et bon a detruire. Si c'est le fait du theatre de s'en preoccuper, c'est encore plus celui de la mitraille (62).

Again, it is clear that Artaud's revolution was not one of a merely

artistic focus, the reform of contemporary theater. His purpose for such a

reform was the realization of his personal revolutionary goals. He

attempted to tear down the cultural scaffolding that supported an unjust

system. The weapon of destruction and the creative cure were both to be

found in the liberation of the forces of the true theater he envisioned. The

tools were to be found in renewing the ancient art of stage direction. The

result was to be the liberation of the anarchic power of poetry and the forces

of life.

I will end this chapter on Le Theatre et son double with an idea that

Artaud introduced in the preface of his collection of essays. It is that

Western culture has succeeded in reducing spiritual hunger to the merely

physical. With the cultural focus on the fulfillment of material needs, the

individual sensibility is no longer capable of the heroic attitude necessary to

achieve spiritual exaltation. The goal of much cultural production is to

30

reduce the psychic tension produced by the unknown. Moreover, the role of

the seeker or the hero is relegated to the sports figure, or the cinema star in

the total hypnosis of an entire culture by a simulacrum of the heroic.

Artaud urged us to put down our forks, push ourselves away from the

table, resist the temptation to appease the spiritual tension on the material

plane:

Nous avons surtout besoin de vivre et de croire a ce qui nous fait vivre et que quelque chose nous fait vivre, ~ et ce qui sort du dedans mysterieux de nous-meme, ne doit pas perpetuellement revenir sur nous-meme dans un souci grossierement digestif ("Le Theatre et la culture", 11).

Furthermore, the heroic attitude necessary for spiritual and metaphysical

transformation was based in the recognition as a culture that hunger on the

physical plane had its double in a spiritual necessity:

Je veux dire que s'il nous importe a tous de manger tout de suite, il nous importe encore plus de ne pas gaspiller dans 1'unique souci de manger tout de suite notre simple force d'avoir faim ( "Le theatre et la culture", 12).

Through the heroic stance, Artaud envisioned a path to the exaltation

of the spirit, comparable to the religious exaltation of one who devotes

oneself to god. He thought human sensibility should be redirected to seek a

crisis point instead of avoiding it. In that way we might become alive to the

31

fullest extent intended by our nature. For Artaud, theater was the space with

the potential for recreating and releasing the forces that would exalt the

human mind and spirit.

Clearly, he was asking a lot. He wanted us to accept theater like we

should accept the plague: as a 'superior evil' that would purge false culture

and lead us to cultural transformation from a state of 'asphyxiating inertia of

matter' ("Le Theatre et la peste, 21). He offered this cure in the form of his

manifesto for a 'Theatre de la cruaute'

32

CHAPTER TWO

SOURCES of GENIUS and MADNESS

Parallel to Artaud's struggle against a culture that seemed to him part

of a vast conspiracy to repress the essence of life is his spiritual battle to be

liberated from the limitations of existence and self. His artistic genius is a

reflection of both these preoccupations. In this chapter I will examine the

link between Artaud's spiritual condition and his artistic vision.

Artaud's correspondance with Jacques Riviere and then his

association with the surrealist group in the early stages of his career expose

a growing passion for an end to cultural limitations on individuality and

expression. His dedication to the liberation of knowledge reveals an

important aspect of his personal struggle to access thought and self through

language.

Artaud's search for a metaphysically whole self and the need to

dismantle the cultural structures that repress it are revealed through his

poetic images and references that address body, family, sexuality, god and

religion. He returns repeatedly to these themes in his poetry and essays, and

in his post-asylum performances on stage and radio.

33

The connection between the vision of genius and the goals of the

Theater of Cruelty to awaken and transform human sensibility is apparent in

his defense of Van Gogh in Van Gogh, le suicide de la societe. Here he also

addresses directly the question of a personally and societally repressed self.

At times he speaks about Van Gogh with such admiration and compassion

that he appears to be describing his own experience. He refers repeatedly to

the special lucidity of those gifted with genius and then speaks about

himself in close conjunction. He expresses his admiration for Van Gogh's

ability to portray, through the depiction of the most banal of scenes, the

raging forces of life. We know that he, too, sensed these forces and sought

the key for their release through his own work.

Artaud's personal experiences as a psychiatric patient as well as his

examination of those of Van Gogh and other artists led to his view that the

psychiatrist perpetuates the repressive structures of society which seek to

control the creative force of the genius.

In rAnti-Oedipe , Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari show how the

nature of the schizophrenic corresponds to natural production as a process

and not as a product. Neither are bound by the limitations on behavior and

thought found in the capitalist system's control of production. Their

analysis shows another way of seeing how Artaud's condition was integral

34

to the process of his own artistic production, which was much more a

process than a product, to the frustration of some literary critics and would-

be acolytes.

The recurring themes of Artaud's life are: escape from the cultural

prison that society attempts to impose on the unique state of lucidity that is

genius, escape from an identity defined by body and family, search for the

essence of being and life. His fierce desire to survive was inseparable from

his passion to access the transformative qualities of life and its double,

theater.

A man surpasses himself

Artaud's motivation to understand his own limitations and move beyond

them is evident in the famous Correspondance avec Jacques Riviere,

thirteen letters exchanged in 1924 between Artaud and the then director of

the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise. Artaud initiated the communication in

response to a notice of rejection by Riviere of the poetry the young writer

had submitted to the celebrated journal.

In the letters, Artaud hoped to explain to Riviere his perception that

his very thoughts were beyond him, unrecoverable in a self, leaving him

35

without a way to anchor his existence or to achieve the metaphysical whole

he sought through poetic expression (Gouhier, 13).

That Riviere advised Artaud to refine his poetic style and expressive

technique reveals a limited comprehension of Artaud's intent. The general

public would later show the same incomprehension of Artaud's experience

and vision.

More than just arguing that his poetry had a right to exist, Artaud was

attempting to explain his reality, as a writer whose thoughts resisted being

translated from the 'spiritual' realm into the symbolic. Significant is his

lack of interest in the suggestion that he should apply himself to improving

his skill in written expression. This seems to be an early indication of a

determination to validate and pursue his own reality beyond established

artistic and cultural norms.

Thus, even as Artaud wrote about the impossibility of expressing or

even keeping thought, the stage was being set to transform one individual's

drama into an encompassing theory about art and culture. As the search to

retain escaping thought in symbolic code gave way to a quest for

transformation through the invisible and immaterial forces of life, Artaud

envisioned a new form of theater.

36

Artaud's involvement in the surrealist group from 1925-1927

revealed a conviction that all sources of knowledge, such as the experiences

of the mentally ill, and the mysteries of the unconscious, had value in the

human experience. He held in violent contempt the Occidental structures of

society and culture that deigned to judge and limit alternative realities. He

wrote in 1925 in the name of the surrealistes;

Nous n'admettons pas qu'on entrave la libre developpement d'un delire, aussi legitime, aussi logique, que toute autre succession d'idees ou d'actes humains (Dulozoi, 103).

That his revolutionary principles by definition exceeded the limits of

society was already clear at the stage when he quit the surrealist group in

1927, accusing them of what he viewed as their capitulation to the

controling social systems. He considered their affiliation with the

communist cause a concession which meant the end to true revolution, and a

conformism that he rejected at every step from that moment on. Artaud

consistently rejected and exceeded culturally imposed artistic limitations in

the theatrical phase between 1927 and 1935 with the Theatre Alfred Jarry

and the Theater of Cruelty Moreover, his projects always surpassed the

financial limitations required by his backers.

Yet, after the financial failure of the Theatre Alfred Jarry in 1930,

then the Cenci and the Theater of Cruelty project in 1935, Artaud appears to

37

have set another internal trajectory that eventually would lead to an ultimate

expression outside the previously set boundaries of self.

Breton locates this change as occurring after Artaud's journey to

Mexico and during his subsequent pilgrimage to Ireland in 1937

According to Breton, Artaud had "passed over to the other side" (Durozoi,

42). Not only did there not seem to be room in the world for Artaud and his

ideas, but neither did there seem any longer to be space for Artaud

'I'homme de theatre' in himself. The conflicts of society and self, thought

and expression seemed in Artaud's mind to have come to an explosive head.

Yet even as those around him perceived what was happening as a mental

breakdown, Artaud only became more convinced that the cause of

imbalance, both cultural and spiritual, was located outside of the self:

Le Monde est a bout [...] toutes les formes de la Vie sont tuees [...] la seule issue est d'achever 1'abolition des formes... Nous nous sommes absolument trompes, nous nous sommes trompes sur tout. Je ne vois rien qui ne soit altere et c'est pourquoi j'ai renonce a tout afin de retrouver ma lumiere natale et que Ma Vie puisse ressusciter...toMr aujourd'hui emprisonne la Vie. La conclusion est facile et fatale (Dorozoi, 41, from a letter to Breton in July, 1937).

His apocalyptic warning about life echoes what his fate was to be for the

next nine years: he was interned in mental institutions, and when finally

released, died two years later at the age of 51.

38

In 1946, Artaud was released from Ivry under the condition that his

friends assure the financial means for his survival and find a living situation

that would meet his medical needs. To raise funds, a reading of his works

and an auction were organized. Artaud's reaction to the reading was to feel

misinterpreted in his vision, even by his closest friends.

With the purpose of explaining himself and exposing his principles

through an authentic reading of his texts, Artaud gave a conference in 1947

at the Theatre du Vieux Colombier. Brau describes Artaud's performance

as follows:

Artaud parle, invective et rugit plus de deux heures. Enfin, sa voix se brise, pathetique, achevement d'un cri dans le silence qu'Andre Gide rompt en montant sur la scene pour I'etreindre. Plus tard, au lendemain de sa mort, il ecrira une des plus belles pages sur Artaud. "...Jamais encore il ne m'avait paru plus admirable. De son etre material, plus rien ne subsistait que d'expressif. ...tout en lui racontait 1'abominable detresse humaine, une sorte de damnation sans recours, sans echappement possible que dans un lyrisme forcene dont ne parvenaient au public que des eclats orduriers, imprecatoires et blasphematoires" (235).

Those who participated in what was to be one of Artaud's final

performances were witness to the end of a long trajectory of revolt

culminating in the apparent dissolving of all boundaries between the

identities of man, artist and mental patient. Jacques Audiberti, who

39

attended Artaud's performance, summed up Artaud's lifetime of personal

and artistic struggle in one line: "C'etait le cri de I'homme excede par lui-

meme" (Brau, 236). Physically, socially, culturally, psychologically,

artistically and ideologically, Artaud tried to push to the breaking point any

limits on personal or creative expression. He was fighting to feel spiritually

and intellectually whole through the same process by which he sought to

create an organic theater unlimited by the restrictions of written language.

When, after the Vieux Colombier performance, Audiberti described

Artaud's exceeding himself, he seems to be describing Artaud's very goal—

to break out of the limiting identities imposed by a self-perpetuating and

self-interested society, and to attempt through this transformation of self to

influence a profound cultural change. Brau suggests that the abrupt change

in Artaud during the Vieux Colombier conference was intentional. Artaud

afterwards said that he realized during the performance that an action more

real, terrible even, was needed to transform the moment. Turning to a living

theater of cruelty was his response.

Artaud revealed his belief that such a theater might bring about a

metaphysical action that would unite the concrete and the abstract by taking

place on both planes with his statement that the intensity would need to

have the force of bombs being detonated (Brau, 235). He used this same

40

image to describe the intensity he experienced in Van Gogh's work, which

he felt could, like true theater, release the forces of nature and shatter the

false forms of culture:

Non, Van Gogh n'etait pas fou, mais ses peintures etaient des feux gregeois, des bombes atomiques, dont Tangle de vision, a cote de toutes les autres peintures qui sevissaient a cette epoque, eut ete capable de deranger gravement le conformisme larvaire de la bourgeoisie second Empire et des sbires de Thiers, de Gambetta, de Felix Faure, comme ceux de Napoleon III.

Car ce n'est pas un certain conformisme de moeurs que la peinture de Van Gogh attaque, mais celui meme des institutions. Et meme la nature exterieure, avec ses climats, ses marees et ses tempetes d'equinoxe, ne peut pas, apres le passage de Van Gogh sur terre, garder la meme gravitation (Van Gogh et la suicide de la societe , 14).

Artaud wanted to affect his audience in such a way, with himself as

both the detonator and the bomb. At the performance at the Vieux

Colombier the spectators were witness to the process of an individual

exploding into myth and of theater surpassing itself to become real life.

Van Gogh, the 'Grand' Oeuvre' and the great conspiracy

Artaud's impassioned and often furious defense of Van Gogh in Van

Gogh, le suicide de la societe followed the 1947 exhibition of the painter's

last works, and a doctor's brutal evaluation of Van Gogh's mental

41

instability in an article that was to be highly influential in forming

contemporary perceptions of the painter's illness (Oeuvres Completes

T.XIII, 302).

Artaud gave compassionate and poetic commentaries about Van

Gogh's art and his 'superior lucidity' which he felt gave the painter an

ability which he describes as follows: 'voir plus loin, infiniment et

dangereusement plus loin que le reel immediat et apparent des faits' (34).

Much is revealed about Artaud's own experience in a society where he felt

it was dangerous to have a vision and the need to reveal it. Artaud had both,

the vision and the need, and what is particularly striking about his defense

of Van Gogh is his absolute conviction that he and others like him were the

sane ones. Through Artaud's identification with Van Gogh, we learn much

about his own struggle to find a spiritual identity in a repressive culture.

He spoke of the characteristics of such a culture and of the difficulty

it posed for those who had to struggle to maintain their difference and locate

their spiritual selves:

Celui de la predominance de la chair sur 1'esprit, ou du corps sur la chair, ou de 1'esprit sur I'un et r autre.

Et ou est dans ce delire la place du moi humain? (20)

42

Artaud was steadfast in the defense of his own perceptions of the

nature of genius and of a cultural conspiracy And yet he never denied that

he was struggling for health, struggling to survive. Most importantly, he

clearly stated that this struggle was directly linked to his creative

production, and is in fact a characteristic of genius:

Nul n'a jamais ecrit ou peint, sculpte, modele, construit, invente, que pour sortir en fait de I'enfer (38).

This 'heir was interior as well as exterior. It was the never ending struggle

to define self, and the perpetual revolution against culture's false

representation of the self.

One aspect of this false representation is the label of paranoia.

Artaud rejected the definition of paranoia as a symptom of delusion. He

viewed paranoia as a true perception of a malevolent societal will that cast

spells on the marginal members of his kind, visionaries and geniuses. He

turned the psychological diagnosis around, linking his illness to the

different reality of the mad and the brilliant:

C'est la pente des hautes natures, toujours d'un cran au-dessus du reel, de tout expliquer par la mauvaise conscience,

de croire que rien jamais n'est du au hasard et que tout ce qui arrive de mal arrive par I'effet d'une mauvaise volonte consciente, intelligente et concertee.

Ce que les psychiatres ne croient jamais.

43

Ce que les genies croient toujours (35).

In Artaud's view, not only then were spirits of genius more sensitive

to the subtle energies of life, but they were also more perceptive of the

conspiratorial nature of social systems. This belief was clearly linked to the

theories about life and culture that he laid out in Le Theatre et son double,

and in particular in "Le Theatre et la peste" In Artaud's view, it was

impossible to contain the forces of life. The bad faith of humanity stemmed

from the refusal to express life in its entirety and the attempt to keep the

dark forces of life contained.

Thus, when Artaud explained that when he was ill, he was under a

spell, it is worthy to suggest that the normative labeling of certain behaviors

as 'abnormal' or 'insane' was indeed a sort of spell that society casts on

people to delineate aesthetic and cultural norms and keep them under

control.

Just as he was consistent in believing that an essential characteristic

of (his) genius was an unconmion sensitivity to knowledge obscured by

repressive culture, he was adamant that society deliberately contained those

forces through the control its members:

C'est pourquoi je suis depuis huit ans interne, et que j'ai ete mis en camisole, empoisonne, et endormi a I'electricite, c'est pour avoir voulu trouver la matiere fondamentale de I'dme

44

(Durozoi, 102).

Artaud wrote bitterly about the conspiracy that an unjust humanity

carries out in retaliation and vengeance against individuals of genius who

seek to be true to themselves rather than to the social body:

Van Gogh n'est pas mort d'un etat de delire propre,

mais d'avoir ete corporellement le champ d'un probleme autour duquel, depuis les origines, se debat 1'esprit inique de cette humanite.

Celui de la predominance de la chair sur 1'esprit, ou du corps sur la chair, ou de I'esprit sur Fun et r autre.

Et ou dans ce delire la place du moi humain? Van Gogh chercha le sien pendant toute sa

vie avec une energie et une determination etranges, et il ne s'est pas suicide dans un coup de folie,

dans la transe de n'y pas parvenir, mais au contraire il venait d'y parvenir et de

decouvrir ce qu'il etait et qui il etait, lorsque la conscience generale de la societe, pour le punir de s'etre arrache a elle,

le suicida (31).

For Artaud, Van Gogh was a martyr in the name of others who

suffered because of the truths they were driven to reveal. He did not believe

that anyone was naturally inclined toward suicide. Rather, he believed that

it was the bad faith of people who denied the needs of those graced with the

sensitivity of genius that drove people to the act. For him, unquestionably,

45

suicide was not an individual effort, but the conspiratorial effort of a

vengeful society

Despite what outward appearances might indicate to the contrary,

Artaud was not suicidal. Although his theatrical projects were rarely

remunerative financially, and his extreme behaviors (travel to Mexico in

search of the peyote eating culture of the Tarahumaras, and to Ireland with

little more than the clothing on his back) put his life at risk, he had a very

practical side. When he abandoned the cinema as a medium for his own

artistic vision during the early 30s he continued acting in films in order to

make a living and finance his theatrical projects. In his correspondance

with backers and publishers he made certain the financial agreements were

clearly stated and carried out. However, Artaud, like Van Gogh, was a soul

driven to find the essence of self. Like the painter, he was 'determined not

to betray himself (38). Artaud, perhaps like no other, understood the risks

of this "terrible necessity" of being true to himself. His quest resulted in

nine years internment. His death from rectal cancer two years later

undoubtedly was undetected due to poor medical treatment in the asylum.

Artaud saw psychiatrists, not surprisingly, as society's principle

weapon against the spirit of genius:

...il est crapuleusement impossible d'etre psychiatre sans etre en meme temps marque au coin de la plus

46

indiscutable folie: celle de ne pouvoir lutter contre ce vieux reflexe atavique de la tourbe et qui fait, de tout homme de science pris a la tourbe, une sorte d'ennemi-ne et inne de tout genie (31).

Susan Sontag stated that Artaud hated psychiatrists because he

misunderstood them (Hubert). Artaud saw them as part of a larger evil, and

a symptom of the deliberate blindness of society to alternative realities. In

light of Artaud's extensive association with the profession, one might

suggest that Artaud knew psychiatrists only too well.

Gilles Deleuze reinforces Artaud's perception that through ignorance

or deliberate ill will, psychiatrists are harmful to the genius spirit. He refers

to Foucault's evaluation of psychiatry, in his argument that the artificially

imposed Oedipal structure creates a self-perpetuating cycle of infinite cure;

Foucault disait que la psychanalyse est restee sourde aux voix de la deraison. En effet, elle nevrotise tout; et par cette nevrotisation elle ne contribue pas seule-ment a produire le nevrose a cure interminable, elle contribue aussi a reproduire le psychotique comme celui qui resiste a I'oedipianisation. Mais une approche directe de la schizophrenic, elle la manque completement. Elle ne manque pas moins la nature inconsciente de la sexualite: par idealisme, par idealisme familiale et theatrale (Pourparlers , 29).

For Artaud the cure surely must have seemed interminable, yet

despite the horror of that lost (and last) decade of his life, that his drive for

47

life was irrepressible is revealed with ironical black humor in the following

description of his daily visits with Docteur Fourdiere at the Ivry clinic:

J'ai passe neuf ans moi-meme dans un asile d'alienes et je n'ai jamais eu I'obsession du suicide, mais je sais que chaque conversation avec un psychiatre, le matin, a I'heure de la visite, me donnait Ten vie de me pendre, sentant que je ne pourrais pas I'egorger (37).

Deleuze and Guattari have referred to psychoanalysts as the official

voice of a society whose basic structure and nature is based on curbing the

uncoded flow of the forces of nature, of which the free-flowing energy of

the schizophrenic is one.

The genius and the enforcer of societal reason are natural adversaries

because the genius seeks to release the forces of the infinite, while the social

order must control the infinite at all costs (represented by the unconscious,

incest, the unrestricted flow of desire/production, etc.) in the name of

reason. The cordoning off of a space defined as 'madness' from the

territory of reason becomes itself a way of giving meaning to reason

through the limiting of other realities. Artaud writes in Van Gogh:

La medecine est nee du mal, si elle n'est pas nee de la maladie, et si elle a, au contraire, provoque et cree de toutes pieces la maladie pour se donner une raison d'etre; mais la psychiatric est nee de la tourbe populaciere des etres qui ont voulu conserver le mal a la source de la maladie et qui ont ainsi extirpe de leur propre neant une espece de garde

48

suisse pour saquer a sa base I'elan de rebellion revendicatrice qui est a I'origine du genie (32).

For Artaud, psychiatry created no cure, but instead perpetuated the

cycle of illness. Because of this, Artaud thought that psychiatrists were the

true madmen. Artaud always emphasized infinite possibility rather than

infinite debt. He names with Van Gogh, Gerard de Nerval, Baudelaire,

Edgar Allen Poe and Lautreamont as artists labeled mad who were damaged

rather than cured by society (60).

In Artaud's view psychiatrists were the most insidious of the

enforcers of the social code of reduction, since the sensitivity of the genius

left him unprotected in the face of the 'cure':

Ce sont la de ces douces conversations de psy-chiatre bonhomme qui n'ont I'air de rien, mais laissent sur le coeur comme la trace d'une petite langue noire, la petite langue noire anodine d'une salamandre empoisonnee.

Et il n'en faut pas plus quelquefois pour amener un genie a se suicider (37).

Van Gogh's story is in certain ways clearly Artaud's story, and the

way Artaud interpreted it, intertwining his response to the painter's

experience with his own, indicates a deep compassion and understanding of

the artist as a victim of a culture which values the product over the

individual.

49

While much of the article is dedicated to exposing the social

conspiracy of which Van Gogh was victim, and the susceptibility of the

nature of genius to the 'deferlements massifs de haine' of that society,

Artaud's personal and artistic response to the painter's work affirms his own

theories about the transformational and apocalyptique potential of art. His

goals for his new theater are revealed in his admiration for Van Gogh's

paintings;

Car il n'y a pas de famine, d'epidemie, d'explosion de volcan, de tremblement de terre, de guerre, qui rebrousse les monades de I'air, qui torde le cou a la figure torve de fama fatum, le destin nevrotique des choses,

comme une peinture de Van Gogh, ~ sortie au jour,... (Van Gogh le Suicide de la Societe, 27).

The drive to surpass all limits set by identity and culture and to

abolish the modem aesthetic of form can be seen in Artaud's self image of a

new body rising from the shattered pieces of the old.

...vous verrez mon corps actuel voler en eclats et se ramasser sous dix mille aspects notoires un corps neuf ou vous ne pourrez plus jamais m'oublier (Theatre de la cruaute , 1947, 118).

Artaud expressed the transformation of form and the rejection of restrictive

literary convention and repressive social structure with poetic imagery Let

us now examine the images of his quest for the essence rather than a fixed

form of poetry

50

The shattering of body and the breakup of form

Artaud's focus on poetic essence over form contributed to the elusive aspect

of his theories. The passion apparent in his vision explains in part his

continuing influence on contemporary theater. However, the lack of

definite technique combined with his limited production have led to

controversy over Artaud's place in theater, here expressed both by Brau and

Grotowsky:

Un de paradoxes, et non le moindre, de I'oeuvre d'Antonin Artaud, c'est le hiatus entre 1'influence qu'il exerce sur le theatre contemporain et son activite theatrale qui se resume en definitive a une longue succession d'echecs et d'entreprises velleitaires. Pour Grotowsky, qui lui doit beaucoup, Artaud est "un grand poete du theatre et non de la litterature dramatique. II n'a laisse aucune methode, aucune technique correcte. II a laisse des visions et des metaphores" (Brau, 89).

A critical perspective of Artaud's production can be upheld with

evidence from both his written legacy and his lack of success on the stage.

However, it is important to add that, in step with the theory of life and

theater that Artaud was proposing, a transparent explication of the

functioning of the transformative energy of the theater of cruelty was

basically impossible. For Artaud it was an occult art whose principles

always evade intellectual exposure. His profound goal was to invoke the

hidden element of magic responsible for igniting the forces of life, and

51

thereby transforming the spectator, the actor and ultimately culture as well.

This is Artaud's poetic legacy—not to describe explicitely but to create the

necessary conditions for life to appear. It is not the form but the essence

that he sought to recreate.

Artaud spoke about abolishing the aesthetic of form. To base an

aesthetic on form, for Artaud, was to restrict the possibilities of forceful

poetic expression. He constantly sought a means of release from the

repressive structures of psychological theater which for him served only to

reiterate the petty interests of humanity through the supremacy of the text

and perpetuate the drama of a culture which to him represented death.

Artaud's rejection of form rebelled against the structures of society that

repressed the metaphysical self. Such societal structures define sexuality,

identity through family, and cultural and material production, as well the

normative boundaries for behavior.

One revealing set of poetic images positing the boundaries of self

within the social body are those that define a different sort of body, a 'body

without organs.' Organs represent the self-interested nature of culture, with

its members plugged into the system, suckling the material, in a closed-

circuit system of self-perpetuating desire.

52

Deleuze and Guattari interpret Artaud's 'body without organs' as an

image that illustrates the way that the free 'flow of energy' is tied up/ tied

down in a capitalist system of production.

Les machines desirantes nous font un organisme; mais au sein de cette production, dans sa production meme, le corps souffre d'etre ainsi organise, de ne pas avoir une autre organisation, ou pas d'organisation du tout.

Le corps plein sans organes est I'improductif, le sterile, I'inengendre, I'inconsommable. Antonin Artaud I'a decouvert, la ou il etait, sans forme et sans figure.

Le corps sans organes est I'improductif; est pourtant il est produit a sa place et a son heure dans la synthese connective, comme I'identite du produire et du produit (la table schizophrenique est un corps sans organes.)

II n'est surtout pas une projection; rien a voir avec le corps propre, ou avec une image du corps. C'est le corps sans image.

Le corps plein sans organes est de 1'anti-production, (I'Anti-Oedipe. 14-15).

The process of controling the natural flow of schizophrenic energy is

ultimately the act of its destruction. Artaud speaks out against the

overvaluing of the product in a gross disregard of the vibrational,

metaphysical essence of creative energy. He viewed genius as plucked and

ravaged by a materialistic society blind to the spiritual. In Pour en finir

avec le judgement de dieu Artaud attacks the system of American capitalist

53

production and the war machine vehemently, one of the main reasons his

radio broadcast was cancelled by the producers before it could be broadcast.

Artaud's condemnation of obsessive materialistic desire extended to

family, religion and god as corrupt organs of the social body, as well as

sexuality, or more accurately libido. For Artaud, modem psychological

thought had transformed 'the liberty of sexuality', one of the dark, essential,

necessary forces of life, into an impure drive mapped and controlled by the

scientific mind (Le Theatre et son double, 44). All these structures reduce

the necessary drive of the life force to materialistic desire, reducing also the

possibility for spiritual exaltation.

Let it flow-

In FAnti-Oedipe. Capitalisme et Schizophrenic and Pourparlers.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari analyse the development of capitalist

domination of modem social stmctures. They use the image of the unbound

or uncontained nature of the schizophrenic as a contrast to the capitalist

system which functions by blocking and controling production. They

equate the flux of natural forces with the schizophrenic's experience. The

schizophrenic body without organs is free flowing, a free agent and outside

54

of the limitations of production. The schizophrenic experience is a process

of nature;

Nous ne pretendons pas fixer un pole naturaliste de la schizophrenic. Ce que le schizophrenic vit specifiquement, generiquement, ce n'est pas du tout un pole specifique de la nature, mais la nature comme processus de production (I'Anti-Oedipe, 9).

The writings of Antonin Artaud are representative of an unrestricted

schizophrenic flow, and are used to support several of Deleuze and

Guattari's analyses. Artaud wrote consistently about the forces of nature

that could not be contained without highly disruptive consequences. In his

poetic imagery, Artaud shattered the image of the body where it connected

with the self-interested societal machine(plugging in at the organs), to

release an unforgettable pure flow of energy, connected only at the

metaphysical source of exaltation. The individual had surpassed his

physical identity, to encounter a metaphysical state.

Another important connection between Artaud's writings and the

analyses of Deleuze and Guattari is the rejection of societally imposed filial

structures that control identity In Artaud le Momo and Ci-Git Artaud

attacked the family structure as an obscene connection to the societal body

using sordid descriptions of bodily functions and in the image of mother-

55

father-god repressing the individual. Artaud rejected the binding of the

individual in a structure of never ending payment and production, resulting

in the self sacrificed to the familial and hence social, identity. He affirms in

Ci-Git:

Je ne crois a ni pere ni mere,

ja na pas a papa-mama,... (99).

Deleuze and Guattari use Artaud's rejection of an identity based on

the Oedipal triangle to illustrate their refutation of the modem

psychoanalytical interpretation of social and cultural structure and family

relations. They attack the Oedipal structure as an artificially imposed

restriction on the flow of desire. They redefine the Oedipal structure as a

system of infinite debt in capitalist production. Here Deleuze and Guattarai

describe the self-perpetuating systems of capitalism and the Oedipal

structure;

Ce que la psychanalyse appelle resolution ou dissolution d'Oedipe, c'est tout a fait comique, c'est precisement r operation de la dette infinie, 1'analyse interminable, la contagion d'Oedipe, sa transmission du pere aux enfants. C'est fou ce qu'on a pu dire de betises au nom d'Oedipe, et d'abord sur 1'enfant (Pourparlers , 29).

56

Similarly, Artaud viewed family as one of the corrupt systems reproducing

false culture, just as he saw psychoanalysts as recreating disease rather than

cure.

We know that Artaud experienced an inablility to access and retain

the essence of his thoughts, 'the intense pre-personal flow' of his

metaphysical self. His desire to tear down the literary and social structures

that both represented and reproduced the barrier resulted from this

experience. Apocalyptique transformation was the only way to release the

forces of life repressed by social codage. In Deleuzian terms, Artaud called

to 'let the flow pass, under the social codes that want to channel and block

them' (Pourparlers32V

As for the triangular Oedipal structure,' Deleuze and Guattari point

out the same tendancy:

Quant a I'Oedipe, c'est encore une maniere de coder I'incodable, de codifier ce qui se derobe aux codes, ou de deplacer le desir et son objet, de les pieger (L'Anti-Oedipe, 204).

This apparatus functions to trap the unconscious in code, reduce the

terrain of the uncodable which for Artaud represented infinite possibility

'familial ou analytique, Oedipe est fondamentalement un

' Important to note that the triangular image of relationship between the father, mother and child recalls the shape of the top of the cross which for Artaud was a physical symbol of restriction of the flow of energy For reference to this shape and the alternate, flow-inducing shape of the arc, see "Tutuguri, le rite du soleil noir" in Pour en finir avec le iueement de dieu.

57

appareil de repression sur les machines desirantes, et nullement une formation de I'inconscient lui-meme' (Pourparlers, 28).

By creating normative poles of behavior, and marginalizing

what falls outside of this range, society actually creates the space called

'madness' We are instructed in this by Artaud's writings about the genius

of Van Gogh and his criticism of the psychoanalytic cure, and by Deleuze

and Guattari in their analyses of the schizophrenic state. According to

Deleuze and Guattari, the schizophrenic, like nature, is already outside these

societally imposed channels of control, and suffers for it. In reference to

Van Gogh, le suicide de la societe, they state in I'Anti-Oedipe:

Du fond de sa souffrance et de sa gloire, il a le droit de denoncer ce que la societe fait du psychotique en train de decoder les flux de desir (160).

Artaud's defense of Van Gogh's genius reveals much about the sources of

both Artaud's own suffering and his creative vision.

Artaud writes that the motivation for his writing is to escape his own

personal hell, which I have interpreted as that of a self divided from its

spiritual essence, and therefore never is whole. We see in his personal

malady the corollary for a cultural sickness.

58

For Artaud, the malady was the loss of poetry It was the devaluing

of life by the empty symbol, form divided from essence. The totality of his

revolt can be seen on all levels, personal, artistic, and cultural, as he

struggled against the impossibility of self, against cultural repression of

expression, against the supremacy of the script in the theatrical production.

He described poetically a theatrical cure for a dying culture. In the

spiraling nature of his work, he returned to the source of his inspiration, his

own suffering, and thus discovered the means for his personal cure.

Artistically, the tragedy is that he was unable to complete his project. Yet

one must recognize how the artist was inseparable from the man and his

experience; that the process was an end in itself. On his manic journeys into

the ancient and violent landscape of the Tarahumaras and to Ireland he took

the show on the road, so to speak. Undeniably, these trips in the midst of

delerium were also a manifestation of the symptoms of his illness. Yet they

also can be seen as the realization of his project of the Theater of Cruelty by

means of his own flesh experience. The man had become his theater

His search for the organic essence of theater echoed a search for self

and true culture. What for society was paranoid, schizophrenic, offensive,

or mad was for Artaud the process of the development of his driving

conviction, the staging of the terrible necessity of his own nature. In other

59

words, for Artaud, as in nature, all action has its origin in the inescapable

purpose of self expression.

For Artaud, the gift or curse of genius was to be able to perceive an

essence of life and its repression in modem culture. The result was an

unavoidable mission to liberate those forces. The necessity of life

demanded it, and the form of the liberation was to be the Theater of Cruelty

Le theatre de la cruaute n'est pas un symbole d'un vide absent, d'une epouvantable incapacity de se realiser dans

sa vie d'homme. II est 1'affirmation d'une terrible et d'ailleurs ineluctable necessite (Le Theatre de la cruaute, 1947, 110).

60

CHAPTER THREE

THE THEATER of CRUELTY

In Chapter Two, I referred to Jerzy Growtowsky's description of

Artaud as the 'grand poete de theatre' who despite the impact he continues

to have on contemporary theater, left few concrete traces of his genius.

Growtowsky evaluates this legacy thus. '"II n'a laisse aucune methode,

aucune technique correcte. II a laisse des visions et des metaphores'"

(Brau, 89). This final chapter is a response to that assertion, and an attempt

to document the main aspects of the theater project for which he is most

well known, "Le Theatre de la cruaute" I will do this by addressing the

following questions:

What are the main principles of the Theater of Cruelty? What are the stated aims of the Theater of Cruelty? What are the influences which inform its principles and technique? What is the technique for a Theater of Cruelty? What are examples of the application of this technique in Artaud's work? What are the indications of evolution in the Theater of Cruelty after the years of internment? What explanation can be found for the lack of detail in the technique of theTheater of Cruelty?

The sections of this chapter are divided in response to these

questions.

61

What are the primary principles of the Theater of Cruelty ?

Principle One; The true language of theater is one of concrete space

and movement, not of written word.

Les possibilites de realisation du theatre appartiennent tout entieres au domaine de la mise en scene, consideree comme un language dans I'espace et en movement (Le Thetoe et son double , 68).

Thus, for Artaud theater, being an autonomous art form and not linked with

literature, does not share the language of literature.

In Le theatre et son double Artaud describes the malady of the

modem age as resulting from the split between between things and the signs

that represent them. This split is the dislocation of the magical and the

poetic forces of life from their signs, which have consequently lost their

ancient function of incantation. The written word mles supreme over other

language, a domination which is linked to the dominance of the scientific,

rational discourse over other expressions of knowledge. In modem theater,

the same hierarchy reigns, with the text subjugating what Artaud calls the

real language of theater, the physical manifestation of the 'absolute gesture'

of pure theater, a language of physical space which portrays 'thoughts as if

in their original state' through the craft of staging, the mise en scene. (Le

Theatre et son double , 94-96).

62

Principle Two; The expression of art for purely aesthetic purposes is

a gratuitous action.

The Theater of Cruelty proposes the return of theater to its original

purpose, in order to effect a permanant and profound change in its

participants. Modem theater had lost this magical force. Artaud envisioned

an 'active theater' that, using the communicative power of the language of

concrete space, was effectual in stimulating deep levels of consciousness or

sensibility that had been denied in the language of words.

Principle Three: 'Everything that acts is a cruelty' (Double. 132).

This principle reiterates Artaud's usage of the word 'cruelty' in his

theatrical vision. In nature action comes about from necessity Through an

'active' theater, 'that awakens us nerves and heart', (Double, 132) Artaud

was ready to submit both himself and the participant (both audience

members and actors alike) to his experiment of theater as the tool of

transcendant and exalted creation. One can understand from the very name

of the project that for Artaud the process of awakening others' sensibilities

to long-obscured potential would not be a comfortable experience.

Principle Four: Theater should stir in the spectators a 'hint of this

great metaphysical fear that is at the heart of all ancient theater' (Le Theatre

et son double , 65).

63

Such a fear was inspired by the ancient dramas inherent in nature,

such as the everpresent potential for chaos. Artaud thought it important to

awaken this fear in order to connect the deep self with nature. In nature, the

spiritual and the material are joined. Through the action of stagecraft on

both the body and the sensibility, Artaud sought to build a 'spiritual

architecture' that would be a virtual metaphysical manifestation of that state

of physical and spiritual unity.

Principle Five; To achieve this metaphysical action the organism

must be touched on all material and spiritual levels, in its entirety.

Artaud thought that the spiritual could be accessed through the body

Therefore, a combination of effects on the senses were required to stimulate

both body and mind. In addition, just as all sensory levels were to be

touched, all points in space were to be filled or examined. Thus the spiritual

architecture would be constructed both in the participant and in the physical

space that surrounded him. Patterns of thought and the concrete things that

initiate them could be traced through the human senses. Not only would the

physical body be shaken, but the spiritual consciousness would be

awakened as well, with signs and symbols that produced a physical reaction,

as in an incantation. Such elements of physical language would 'in a

64

physical way reveal to us some of the most secret perceptions of the spirit'

(Double. 93).

Principle Six: The staging director would be the true author of the

theatrical production.

With the intuitive direction of the elements of the sensory and

symbolic language the staging director would create the necessary

environment for the spiritual transformation. For Artaud, theater had poetic

action because of the nature of the stage where no moment of creation could

ever be repeated exactly the same way. In this way theater doubled life.

Artaud asserted that 'written poetry has value once and then should be

destroyed' ("Pour en finir avec les chefs-d'oeuvre", 121). The force of

poetry is not contained in its form, but underlies form. The

staging director must therefore reveal and use this underlying poetic force.

Principle Seven. The final principle is that the language of theatrical

space was to be reinvented for modem times, with a vocabulary of signs

that matched modem drama and psychic necessity.

What are the aims of the Theater of Cruelty?

First Aim: One of Artaud's essential goals was to reconnect with

poetry.

65

For Artaud, the anarchic nature of poetry was the force that would

renew life and overturn the forms of a dying culture. In his view poetry was

created and experienced on a vibrational level, not in the fixed expression of

the word. Underlying words, which may be organized into the form called

"poetry", there existed the true force of poetry, trapped in the fixed form.

On stage, through a 'consecutive' or 'connective' poetry of successive and

overlapping signs and sensory techniques, a poetry of space could be

achieved, and its transformational, transcendant, metaphysical force could

be released.

...tirer les consequences poetiques extremes des moyens de realisation c'est en faire la metaphysique... (Double, 68).

Second Aim; Shatter conventional form.

Artaud wished to release a poetic 'epidemic' on stage that would

effect the 'immense liquidation' of form and thereby release the forces of

nature that have been repressed by humanity, and open up the conscience to

the intelligence of all 'perverse possibilities' of the soul. Psychic and

sensory disassociation and dissonance were primary tools for this action.

Third Aim: Reenact ancient conflicts and dramas of nature, that are

in essence divine, not human.

The purpose of the re-enactment of primal dramas was to allow the

awareness of a buried knowledge of a greater reality to resurface, physically

66

represented in nature. Artaud perceived that the gratuitous entertainments

of modem, occidental culture had numbed humanity to this knowledge. He

saw that people avoided the hard truths of life and the essential cruelty that

went hand in hand with living, rather than merely existing. Yet Artaud

maintained nevertheless that people were filled with curiosity about the true

dramas of life, such as those portrayed in the ancient Myths:

• La terrorisante apparition du Mai qui dans les Mysteres d'Eleusis etait donnee dans sa forme pure, et etait vraiment revelee, repond au temps noir de certaines tragedies antiques que tout vrai theatre doit retrouver (Double, 44).

Fourth Aim: Transform the participant.

Through a methodical, 'mathematical' application of symbols

evoking the ancient dramas, Artaud wanted to transform the attitude of the

audience into one of heroic participation. The knowledge accessed at a

deeper level of sensibility might force the participant to transcend

preoccupations with the self, and open the way for the exaltation of the soul

and a spiritual transformation. This is what Artaud called the 'Grande

Oeuvre', a theatrical corollary to the alchemical transformation of base

metal into gold. This type of theater would invite the participant to

participate actively in his or her destiny

...a prendre en face du destin une attitude heroique

67

et superieure qu'[il] n'aurai[t] iamais eue sans cela (Double. 45).

Once again, the staging director would manipulate the secret and

magical arts of the language in space that might bring about the

transformation of the spectator's desire to be entertained into an heroic

consciousness. The director would thus 'shatter the repose of the senses',

and let in all 'perverse possibilities' of life ("Le Theatre de la cruaute,137).

What are the influences which informed the creation of the Theater of

Cruelty?

The most profound source of inspiration for Artaud's Theater of

Cruelty was that of eastern theater, especially Balinese theater. He also

cites primitive and ritualistic ceremony, religious and mystical theater,

ancient tragedy, and Elisabethan drama as sources of influence.

Artaud turned to the conventions of Oriental theater to remedy the

loss of poetry from western theater and culture. In Artaud's estimation,

Oriental theater succeeded in releasing the anarchic, active forces of nature

and of poetry through the complex, symbolic and communicative art of

staging. A language of non-verbal signs dominates eastern theater, such as

gestures and sensory effects that evoke natural images of ancient and divine

68

dramas. The effectual quality of this theater depends on an intuitive

understanding of correspondances that reveal the essential cruelty ( or

conflicts) always at play in life. Oriental theatrical art manifests the

metaphysical fear at the root of all ancient theater Always, action must

invoke fear, sometimes with the sense of surprise, other times with the sense

of danger, to reach and release the forces of the repressed realities of nature,

or the nonhuman, in order to reawaken a sensibilities numbed on a physical,

spiritual and psychic level. The language of this action is physical and

sensory, yet also intellectual, without dependence on the word to convey

concepts. Artaud was fascinated with the oriental craft of staging:

Le Theatre Balinais nous en propose une realisation stupefiante en ce sens qu'elle supprime toute possibilite de recours aux mots pour r elucidation des themes des plus abstraits (Double. 94).

The language of Balinese theater is integral to Artaud's vision of theatrical

space;

...un langage de gestes faits pour evoluer dans I'espace et qui ne peuvent avoir de sens en dehors de lui (Double. 94).

The precision the signs and gestures developed over millenia is

important since it both precludes improvisation, which Artaud condemns as

reflective of the preoccupation with the ego of western, or psychological

theater, and indicates a formula with an intended effect, the transformation

69

of mind, spirit or essence. There is a spontaneity in the combustion of the

action, but this latter requires the necessary procedures and catalysts to

explode. Instead of projecting an improvised style, the ritualistic use of

signs developed since ancient times to reveal a knowledge of natural forces

lends to the theatrical play the solemnity of 'a sacred rite' (Double, 89).

Artaud observed in the Theater of Bali dance, song and pantomime

that produced a trance-like state of hallucination and fear in the audience.

The characters, who were typed personalities, were dramatic yet familiar,

coming from a different dimension of reality as if they were ghosts of the

persons the spectators expected. Thus the actors do not portray individual

personalities, but rather archetypal characteristics.

Gestures become signs, and actors become symbols, or living

hieroglyphs. States of mind were exposed through gesture, not words,

movements reduced to their most efficient essence. Artaud associated such

techniques with his ideal of pure theater:

En somme les Balinais realisent, avec la plus exteme rigueur, I'idee du theatre pur, ou tout, conception comme realisation, ne vaut, n'a d'existence que par son degre d'objectivation sur la scene (Double. 82).

70

Artaud used the term "objective" to refer to the degree of effectiveness of

stagecraft, an art which he viewed as autonomous rather than a branch of

literature because its creativity was manifested on the stage.

The element of surprise related to fear can be brought about by a

staging director who directs the language of the stage in a 'complicated

abundance' of all its elements, a strange juxtaposition of modulations of

voice, abrupt attitudes, musical phrases, puppet-like danses, cries, and

naturalistic costuming meant to shock (Double , 82).

One can imagine the disturbing emotions produced by the figures of

the actors, who move with deliberately inhuman movements as if

manipulated by an invisible puppeteer. In addition, the sounds produced in

a way not associated with everyday communication, with a vibratory

quality at the back of the throat, or at shrill levels, might evoke the

sensations of a dream or nightmare. Such effectual qualities of

stagecraft were directly related to Artaud's concept of a 'poetry in space'

The term poetry refers to the active force of the technique, the vibration

produced on a level of knowledge not processed by reason. For Artaud,

poetic force was at the heart of Balinese theater.

What is the technique for a Theater of Cruelty?

71

The action of this theater, that which would make it effective, is the

stimulation of human sensibility through the body Artaud wished to create

a metaphysical connection between spirit and matter. Such a transformation

would operate on a vibratory level, and in that sense the value of the staging

effect can be measured in terms of its vibratory quality What is fascinating

about this idea is that vibrations could be said to be located in a space that is

somehow moving between the spiritual and the material, a poetic space in

motion that becomes the metaphysical link between the concrete and the

abstract.

Another way of looking at this vibratory force is to consider the

energy created when suprising poetic imagery allows us to see the ordinary

in an extraordinary light. Artaud felt that poetic associations awaken a

knowledge that is not supported by reason, but rather by a spiritual or even

a mystical awareness. Artaud was fascinated with Balinese theater which

used such incongruous combinations of sensations, movements, signs and

images to create dissonances and disassociations which had the effect of

shocking the audience into a physical, emotional and possibly spiritual

participation in the theatrical action. He attempted to adapt these techniques

to western sensibility in his Theater of Cruelty.

72

To manifest a 'metaphysic of poetry', the magical action of

unification, in the theatrical space, Artaud intended that the elements of his

'language in space' should touch the spectator on as many levels of

consciousness and sensibility as possible. Theater is the privileged space

for this type of action since it is a physical space, and can therefore reach

the spectator physically, through the body. Artaud likened the effect of

such a physical space to the experience of the snake being charmed by the

snake charmer's music and motions:

Si la musique agit sur les serpents ce n'est pas par les notions spirituelles qu'elle leur apporte, mais parce que les serpents sont longs, qu'ils s'enroulent longuement sur la terre, que leur corps touche a la terre par sa presque totalite; et les vibrations musicales qui se communiquent a la terre I'atteignent comme un massage tres subtil et tres long; eh bien, je propose d'en agir avec les spectateurs comme avec les serpents qu'on charme et de les faire revenir par I'organisme jusqu'aux plus subtiles notions (emphasis mine, "En finir avec les chefs-d'oeuvre", 126),

Artaud intended the participant in the Theater of Cruelty to be

'assailed' physically by all types of sensory input, in combination with

'mysterious signs' representing fabulous realities repressed by western

culture (Double. 93). This purposeful, carefully orchestrated chaos of signs

and sensations, by passing through the physical, bypasses verbal language.

The actors thus become three-dimensional hieroglyphs who represent

cosmic notions in their movements, costuming and attitudes. They were

73

meant to produce a physical reaction, stirring what Artaud called the

'intellect of the senses'

Conventional forms thus were shattered by combining staging effects,

such as the mixture of certain colors with certain forms, and natural images

purposely associated with certain sounds, and the disconcertingly jerky

movements of the mannequin-like actors, accompanied by startling cries.

Artaud was taken with the 'expressive play' of the Balinese theater:

the rolling of eyes, the expression of the lips, muscular twitching, rolling of

head on shoulders as if on mechanical rollers, and the combined effect of

the association of music or a tone with these movements, as well as yelps,

tremblings and cadences of the heel (Double, 84). Artaud was already

known for 'the most extreme gestures' both on stage and off with varying

degrees of success. Some of the more vitriolic criticisms of Les Cenci were

directed toward his personal acting style, which included physical

distortions disconcerting to the western eye.

The mechanized movements of the actor, in combination with an

unexpected 'intense liberation of signs, held back at first, and then suddenly

flung into the air' (Double, 93), of these 'gestures pushed to the limit'

(Double, 40), are intended to fill the participant with a sense of chaos and of

the 'essential drama of life' (Double, 77).

74

The exuberance of natural imagery is intended to provoke the same

sensations, and to push the audience's psyche further in sensing the non-

human order of the universe. Nature is revealed in its chaotic splendor

through the staging effects of 'this sonorous rain of an immense forest'

(Double , 87) and the 'effervescence of painted rythms' (94).

Artaud thought that experiencing a virtual state of controlled chaos

led to the realization that despite the threat of complete physical and psychic

anarchy, the universe holds together without human, i.e. rational

intervention. Moreover, the assailing of the senses on all levels 'teaches us

the metaphysical identity of the concrete and of the abstract' (Double , 91).

Through natural images that evoke the fear of the non-human with their

'godlike themes' that 'seem to come from the primitive junctures of Nature

that a doubling Spirit favors', the spectator could be guided to the

awareness of the presence of a 'superior life' (92). One expected human

response to such a realization is, of course, fear. Artaud sought to evoke

such metaphysical fear in his Theater of Cruelty. He used imagery to

evoke emotions of fear and astonishment at the immense power of the

universe.

Another element used to evoke emotion is the physical space of the

stage. Artaud's goal was to make the physical space speak a concrete

75

language. Artaud thought that geometric lines of planned movement would

make the participant aware of all of the space. The dancing actors were to

give both a sense of extreme order and of pending chaos with their

movements. Artaud wanted his actors to reach an equilibrium with the body

that threatened to fall the way of nature, anarchy, and chaos. Artaud's notes

for the staging of Les Cenci contain intricate stage directions for the exact

movements of the actors. For Artaud, the geometry of movement had the

potential of a spatial language. For this reason, Artaud admired the control

of space in the painting "Les Filles de Loth" by Lucas van den Leyden. In

his commentary on the painting, we can see his intention to manipulate

visual signs:

II semble que le peintre ait eu connaissance de certains secrets concemant I'harmonie lineaire, et des moyens de la faire agir directement sur le cerveau, comme un reactif physique (Double. 53).

An example of a shape that produces complex mental and emotional

imagery would be the labyrinth. The memory of the shape in ancient myth

evokes the emotion of the characters when faced with the invisible terror of

the minotaur, while on the visual plane the complicated lines in space

produce a feeling of confusion, as if in a dreamworld, and a consequent

sense of loss of control. This sensation leads back to a questioning of who

or what is in control.

76

In the Theater of Cruelty, the stage director directs the

act of creation. By combining effects in a carefully scripted sequence,

Artaud hoped to produce what he called the 'connective poetry' of the stage.

Vital to the success of the play was the director's poetic intuition.

Finally, to maximize the effect of a 'performance that addresses the

whole organism', Artaud proposed a 'total spectacle' where the theatrical

space was no longer divided between separate areas for the spectator and for

the action of the performance. He described a theatrical space, in which the

spectator was seated in the center, and was assailed from all sides by the

staging effects and the action of the play in a sort of 'turning performance'

The acting would take place at the four cardinal points of the room. The

spectator thus would be surrounded, and penetrated from all sides by

significant combinations of gestures, sounds and music, movement and

dance, signs, lights and colors. In addition, there would be galleries which

circled the space on a higher level, allowing action to take place in all

possible points of space, a physical reminder of possible alternative

realities.

What are examples of the application of this technique in

Artaud's work?"Les Cenci.

77

Les Cenci was to be a demonstration project for the Theater of

Cruelty to attract the backers Artaud needed to continue his theater

company Naturally, he hoped for a success. The play, a tragedy in four

acts adapted from Shelley and Stendhal, premiered at the Theatre des

Folies-Wagram on May 6th, 1935, with Artaud playing the evil patriarch

Cenci. The mise en scene was a collaboration between Artaud, the painter

Balthus (decor) and the musician Roger Desormiere (music and sound

effects).

Artaud did not receive the backing nor the public acclaim he had

hoped for. Instead, Les Cenci was the final production of the Theater of

Cruelty, which ended as a company when the play closed after only 17

performances. Artaud attributed the play's commercial failure in part to the

various concessions he was forced to make to demands by backers. He had

to modify many technical aspects, and therefore did not have free rein to

realize his vision as put forth in Le Theatre et son double. Another

restriction was underfunding.

One important modification was that Artaud was obliged to use pre­

recorded sound, which he felt greatly reduced its vibrational force.

However, by placing loudspeakers in each comer of the hall, he maintains

that at least the spectator was auditorily immersed.

78

Tout comme dans le Theatre de la Cruaute, le spectateur se trouvera, dans Les Cenci, au centre d'un reseau de vibrations sonores; (Oeuvres completes tome V, 46).

A more pressing question is why Artaud chose to put on a production

whose drama seemingly was centered in a written script. For those who

were waiting for a demonstration of his theories Artaud's Les Cenci was

not an accurate representation of his vision. Gouhier suggests that another

play, for which Artaud had written the scenario for the staging but never

produced, La Conquete du Mexique would have been a better vehicle for

the 'total spectacle' that Artaud hoped to implement (111). This play,

written only as staging notes and not as a script, was intended for a

theatrical space conforming to his vision. However, it also ambitiously

demanded an acting crew of 300 and thus could not feasibly be produced.

Artaud undoubtedly had no choice but to promote a project that appealed

more to backers unwilling to fund a too costly or too radical production.

However, Artaud thought Les Cenci was nevertheless a viable choice

since the script took a subordinate role to the staging:

Les gestes et les mouvements y ont autant d'importance que le texte; et celui-ci a ete etabli pour servir de reactif au reste. Et je crois que ce sera la premiere fois, tout au moins ici en Frsince, que I'on aura affaire a un texte de theatre ecrit en fonction d'une mise en scene dont les modalites sont sorties toutes concretes et toutes vives de I'imagination de I'auteur (Oeuvres completes tome V, 46).

79

Artaud also points out two other aspects of the stage direction that he

felt successfully carried out his technique for the Theater of Cruelty. One

was the use of the mannequins to mirror human characters, and become

symbolic of images and emotions of non-verbal human sensibility:

Tout ce qui est reproches, rancoeurs, remords, angoisses, revendi-cations, les mannequins seront la pour le formuler et on verra d'un bout a r autre de la piece tout un langage de gestes et de signes ou les inquietudes de I'epoque se rassemblent dans une sorte de violente manifestation (Oeuvres completes tome V, 46).

Another aspect of his production that remained particularly true to his

original vision was the enactment of dramas of mythical proportions, those

that required heroic attitudes of the participants:

Nous ne sommes pas encore chez les Dieux, mais nous sommes presque chez les heros, tels que les entendaient les Antiques. Et, en tout cas, il y a, dans les personnages des Cenci, ce cote exalte, legendaire (Oeuvres completes tome V, 46).

Thus, despite Artaud's reservations that Les Cenci could fully

illustrate his theories, he nevertheless felt that the play showcased many of

his ideas for an 'active theater'.

In the following section, I will explore some of the themes of the play

as illustrations of Artaud's theory

80

In Les Cenci, the inexplicable cruelty of a father toward his children,

in the form of psychological and physical torture, murder, and incest were

the first blows that the audience sustained in facing the cruel truths of a

theater that doubles life. Additionally, both perpetrator and the victim

suggested a repressed repentence and hidden desire. The characters of the

patriarch and the representatives of the Church exposed the corruption of

authority to reveal a core of moral senselessness. Through these characters,

Artaud portrayed morality as a repressive cultural construct rather than a

natural one. In attempting to bring ancient myths concretely to life on

stage, Artaud wished to transport the spectators to the time when those

myths were created, to a space in the human psyche before the light of

rational knowledge divided human consciousness into opposing states of

reason and natural instinct.

Virmaux notes the importance of incest to emphasize the cruelty of

natural law, which, separated from social or human law, becomes a

testimony to the uncontrollable forces that direct life as 'an absolute evil'

He also suggest that since the notion of incest challenges and overflows the

limitations of social law, it represents the transcendant or metaphysical. In

the sense of rejecting society's social and moral values, incest is a form of

absolute revolt (56).

81

With these themes, Artaud hoped to guide the spectator to a psychic

space where knowledge was unified in the spiritual and the corporeal, as in

a state of nature. This state is embodied in Cenci who was driven to express

his nature, as Pierre Jean Jouve states, by 'the fatality of instinct' (Virmaux,

307).

The forces that drive Cenci are as irrepressible as the cruel truths of

nature, and the play exposes the dark comers of his soul step by step. His

nature is his destiny He in fact embodies the unbridled chaos of nature

itself. Additionally, he represents the heroic stance, since he takes his

destiny into his own hands through direct action.

...il m'arrive plus d'une fois en reve de m'identifier avec le destin. C'est la I'explication de mes vices, et de cette pente naturelle de haine ou mes proches sont ceux qui me genent le plus. Je me crois et je suis une force de la nature. Pour moi, il n'y a ni vie, ni mort, ni dieu, ni inceste, ni repentir, ni crime. J'obeis a ma loi qui ne me donne pas le vertige; et tant pis pour qui est happe et qui sombre dans le gouffre que je suis devenu.

Je cherche et je fais le mal par destination et par principe. Je ne saurais resister aux fores qui brulent de se ruer en moi (153).

Cenci's dream of his nature and his destiny recalls the dream the

count of Sardinia had in "Le theatre et la peste". The dream showed the

count a plague that threatened his domaine and communicated to him the

power of his conscious will. For Artaud a dream was not an illusion but

82

another reality. The same dreamworld forces imposed themselves on

individual destiny with Beatrice's dream of her own rape in Les Cenci. The

dreamworld, like the space of true theater, apparently liberated the forces of

nature.

Through Cenci, Artaud portrayed the clash between the feudal world

and the emerging modem world, between the dark millenia of natural

history and the young, promising world of reason. Cynical Camillo, the

pope's legate, describes a modem world ready to trade its freedom for

peace:

...nous sorames las des batailles. Le monde est faible: il aspire a la paix (Tome IV, 152).

Cenci's sinister reply reflects Artaud's waming about a modem culture that

has relinquished its own destiny to the morality of the age of reason .

Je feterai cette amnistie generale dans une orgie ou vous serez tous con vies, chefs de noblesse et du sacerdoce, une grande orgie des temps de mollesse, ou les vices du vieux comte Cenci vous montreront ce que veut dire la paix (Tome IV, 152).

In this play, the modem world is cormpt, hypocritical, self-serving,

and ready to chose modernity and the imposed peace of social stmcture over

the darkness of its history.

83

The themes portraying the natural force of the universe were

reinforced by the staging effects:

J'ai impose a ma tragedie le mouvement de la nature, cette espece de gravitation qui meut les plantes, et les etres comme des plantes, et qu'on retrouve fixee dans les bouleversements volcaniques du sol (Oeuvres Completes tome V, 46).

The image of the circle is central to the Theater of Cruelty. It

represents the inexorable dance of life and death in nature. We have already

noted the importance of the circle in Artaud's 'turning performance' in

which the action envelops the spectator. Virmaux points out that the circle

or the wheel has been present in Artaud's work since the beginning. It has

been used in the spatial geometry of the stage and is recurrent in the actors'

movements. The circle is important as well in operations of magic and

incantations (Virmaux, 58).

A spectacular use of the wheel in Les Cenci is Beatrice's torture

scene while she waits to be executed for the murder of her father. She was

to be suspended by her hair from the wheel as it advanced onto the stage,

accompanied by piteous cries and creaks from the wheel. The original plan

was much more radical than the more stable compromise reached (not

harmoniously) between the actress and the director. Artaud was hoping to

make her suffering as life-like as possible.

84

Artaud's notes for the staging also include detailed choreography for

the actors. These reveal the same circular imagery:

Les convives decrivent des cercles, quelques-uns assez rapides, d'autres plus lents. Parmi ces demiers, D. suit les evolutions d'un nain en s'arretant de temps en temps, puis soudain pousse un cri (Virmaux, 281).

The scene gives the impression of a circus of madmen, circling

mindlessly in the torment of anguish and fear. The circular shapes that

might otherwise represent the magical nature of the cosmos, have their

power broken by the symbol of the broken arch which counteracts the

unifying force of the circle (imagery observed opening night by Pierre Jean

Jouve, described in Virmaux, 308). This same opposition of the circular

arch and the disruptive force of the linear cross can be seen later in 1947 in

Tutuguri. le rite du soleil noir in the text for the radio broadcast Pour en

finir avec le iugement de Dieu.

Another aspect of note in the staging is the mechanized movements of

the two assassins who Beatrice hired to murder her father. In these

machine-like actions Artaud intended to show the weakness of humanity in

face of a 'superior life', a cosmic will too powerful to be repressed by

human will. Beatrice enchants the assassins to prepare them for their

murderous task. Does she, in her 'savagery' (Virmaux, 308) represent these

85

natural forces and the superior will that directs them? The assassins'

mechanized movements are as disturbing as their mindless grimaces. For

Artaud, the mannequins, here the assassins, have the role of doubling

rational thought with unconscious knowledge:

[lis] seront la pour faire dire aux heros de la piece ce qui les gene et que la parole humaine est incapable d'exprimer (Oeuvres Completes, tome V, 46).

On a deep level of consciousness, what is disturbing the characters is

the realization of the 'absolute evil' of the universe. For Artaud, in theater

as in life, good is an exception, while evil or cruelty is a constant.

As Pierre Jean Jouve affirms in his article, "Les Cenci d'Antonin

Artaud" (entire text reproduced in Virtnaux, 306), both Cenci and his

daughter represent 'the anarchy of evil' and 'sacrilege'. He also gives his

impression that the spectator was drawn into a strange alliance with the mad

patriarch, who 'contains enough sobbing pain and defiance to connect us to

his torture' (306). Thus, the aspects of Cenci's character are not to be

judged as reprehensible, but inseparable from his nature, just as nature is

without a moral sense of good or bad. According to Jouve, Artaud played

Cenci as 'this furious blasphemer of God and an atheist in the manner of de

Sade...under the sign of paranoia...'' (306).

86

In other descriptions of the staging as he observed it on opening

night, Jouve states that in the 'eternal immutable dramas', such as 'a young

girl raped by her father, whom she kills, does not acknowledge her own

guilt, but whom society puts to death', the spectator might recognize 'an

awful or painful or sensitive Face that is our own, which upon considering

has a thousand times caused us to secretly moan' (Virmaux, 306-307). This

would have been the experience Artaud hoped for in the audience, so that

they would be drawn into the play as if it played out their own lives. Jouve's

impression of Artaud interpreting Cenci was that it was at least in part his

performance that drew the audience into the action of the Theater of

Cruelty:

Ce theatre n'est pas fait pour plaire; Artaud joue constamment contre la salle, et gagne.' .. 'La tension la plus apre [trouble] et parfois [blesse] le spectateur (Virmaux, 307).

In other conmients on the acting and on the physical aspects of the

set, Jouve says that the play offered 'these heavy resonances; the fabric of

sentiment; these baroque poses that the Romantics were the last to dare

employ' (307). His reference to the Romantics recalls another theatrical

influence for Artaud. He describes the set that Balthus built as a 'gigantic

prison-palace' with 'scaffolding like a giant ladder and a round column,

against the sky, that raised the Cenci palace to a frightening height' (307).

87

From this description one can see that Artaud was indeed filling the

theatrical space. The monstruous scale raised above the audience was

symbolic of a superior or cosmic will, and evocative of the home of the

gods. Other symbols evident were: 'the red curtains, hanging, like "rags of

iron", or clots of stiffened blood, the arches broken and interrupted in space'

(307). Balthus aimed to create a visual dissonance with color combinations

and 'certain ruptures of form' in the staging. The costumes stood out in

vivid contrast against the impressive backdrop with its 'dead material of the

stone, the stairways...the wheels and the cords' (307). For Jouve as for

Artaud, the staging played no secondary role to the script in this

presentation.

..la mise en scene d'Antonin Artaud anime continument cet espace de fagon creatrice; nous sommes ici en travail constant (Virmaux,308).

Here one perceives the extensive attention given to the planning and

construction of the set, the transmission of the images and symbols, and,

ultimately, the intensity of their effect on the spectator. Jouve states that the

combined staging effects all revealed to the spectator that 'space with time

form an affective reality' (Virmaux, 308). Pulling the participant further

into this reality were the 'emphatic and somber acting of Artaud

himself...the incandescent beauty and the childlike, savage acting of lya

88

Abdy' (Virmaux, 308). Jouve mentions the simplicity and the force, the

symbolic quality of the italianate set, as well as its 'interior' quality By

this he meant that the action on the stage became indistinguishable from the

effect on the spectator's sensibility.

In another testimony, Roger Blin showed himself to be a less captive

spectator. He mentioned the shabbiness of the theater, and stated that the

most interesting aspect of the play were the Balthus' decor and Roger

Desormiere's music and sound effects. He observed that Balthus knew the

symbolism of colors and form, and that Desormiere knew the

communicative value of sound. Blin discussed Artaud's stage

effect, giving the impression of a certain distance, as if he himself were not

terribly affected by the technique. Blin thought the play might have been

better received in a 'country where people attend and are crazy about

theater, and that country is not France' (Virmaux, 318). Artaud, whose

primary goal was to change the course of contemporary theater, perhaps had

been overly optimistic about the effect his theatrical vision could have had

on a culture which long ago had abandoned the practice of 'true theater'

What are the indications of evolution in the vision of the Theater of

Cruelty after the years of internment?

89

Virmaux suggests that when Artaud stopped directing the theater

company and began his travels in Mexico and Ireland, theater and real life

had become indistinguishable from each other. Artaud had become

inseparable from his vision. He had already exploded the boundaries of

artistic expression permitted within western culture and thus begun to

search for other cultures more deeply rooted in a metaphysical connection

with the universe. But by 1937, he was interned in the first of a succession

of asylums, an experience that would test his personal metaphysical ties

with the cosmos for nine years. Incredibly, in 1946, Antonin Artaud, the

poet and theoretician of theater, was resurrected. He died only two years

after his release from the asylum, but his writing during that time gives

evidence that Artaud's vision of a new type of theater was still evolving, yet

also that he continued in his personal struggle with self expression.

In Preambule written in August 1946 as the preface to his collected

works then being negotiated with Gallimard, Artaud revealed his suffering

during the preceeding decade:

Moi poete j'entends des voix qui ne sont plus du monde des idees. Car la ou je suis il n'y a plus a penser

and later*

Le theatre c'est I'echafaud, la potence, les tranchees, le four crematoire ou I'asile des alienes. La cruaute; les corps massacres.

90

Vituperer dans la poche noire qui un jour m'a gueri de penser (Oeuvres completes, tome I, 10-11).

Here, one can see two indications of a change in Artaud's vision.

First he emphasizes the aural in his reference to the voices, (repeated

elsewhere in this text). This anticipates the direction he was to take with the

radio broadcast project the following year. Second, thought, as either a

process or an essence, is now removed from experience. Previously during

the Les Cenci period, Artaud's goal had been to liberate thought from fixed

form, yet the essence called 'pensee' still existed.

On the other hand, there are other clues in this text that indicate a

continuation of the principles of Artaud's original vision. He criticized

gratuitous forms of art which carry no active, transformative force;

..si j'enfonce un mot violent comme un clou je veux qu'il suppure dans la phrase comme une ecchymose a cent trous. On ne reproche pas a un ecrivain un mot obscene parce qu'obscene, on le lui reproche s'il est gratuit, je veux dire plat et sans gris-gris (Oeuvres completes, tome I, 9).

For Artaud, the violence of poetic force was of value only to the extent that

it brought about real change. He alluded also to the "necessity" of action in

the process of creation, and to his own struggle for a poetic identity:

II y a des imbeciles qui se croient des etres, etres par inneite. Moi je suis celui qui pour etre doit fouetter son inneite.

91

What was innate had to be reworked, for it represented fixed form and with

it the notion that only certain states could be admissible, that others would

be repressed.

Finally, he made reference again to an apparent movement toward the

aural, as the mode for conveying his creative force: 'C'est pour les

analphabetes que j'ecris' (10). The illiterate who had no contact with the

written word could still feel the force of poetry through the voice.

Andre Gide wrote, in 1948 just after Artaud's death, a testimony of

the reading/performance Artaud gave in 1947 at the Vieux-Colombier

theater What is striking about Gide's observations is the impression he had

that the Theater of Cruelty project lived on, embodied in the author himself:

...de son etre materiel, plus rien ne subsistait que d'expressif...son visage consume par la flamme interieure, ses mains de qui se noie, soit tendues vers un insaisissable secours, soit tordues dans

I'angoisse, ...tout en lui racontant I'abominable detresse humaine...Et certes Ton retrouvait ici I'acteur merveilleux que cet artiste pouvait devenir. mais c'est son personnage meme qu'il offr£iit qu public,...ou transparaissait une authenticite totale (Virmaux, 310).

Artaud, in his madness, seemed to have undergone a process of purification,

of distillation to his very essence. Clearly, the public, many of whom had

come to ridicule Artaud, was struck by his energy. For Gide, the whole

room seemed to be transported out of an exteriorized role of spectator, to an

92

interior position in the performance, becoming participants in the Theater of

Cruelty before them;

La raison battait en retraite; non point seulement la sienne, mais celle de toute I'assemblee, de nous tous, spectateurs de ce drame atroce, reduits aux roles de comparses malevoles, de jeanfoutres et de paltoquets. Oh! non, plus personne, dans 1'assistance, n'avait en vie de rire; et meme, Artaud nous avait enleve 1'en vie de rire pour longtemps. II nous avait contraints a son jeu tragique de revoke contre tout ce qui, admis par nous, demeurait pour lui, plus pur, inadmissible...ron se sentait honteux de reprendre place en un monde ou le confort est forme de compromission (Gide's article in Virmaux, 310).

The purified essence of Antonin Artaud had dropped like a bomb

among the audience thrust into an awareness of the "perverse possibility" of

their being. The final phase of the Theater of Cruelty had begun.

Helga Finter affirms that Artaud's performance was a manifestation

of the Theater of Cruelty in an evolved form;

What some, Andre Breton included, saw as the unbearable exhibition of a mental patient was for Artaud the unprecedented attempt at exploding the boundaries of a theatrical event (Finter, 5).

Finter states that Artaud failed in his attempt to 'make the causes of

suffering audible through the reality of that suffering', since the spectator

was unable to reconcile the portrayal of the Real, that which is undefinable,

unimaginable, unlocatable, in the context of the stage, which is a space

dominated by the symbolic representation of life:

93

[i]ii the context of the symbolic contract implicit in a lecture on a theater stage, the irruption of the Real in the form of sickness, suffering, and insanity was perceived as sensational exhibitionism and histrionics (Finter, 5).

She states that Artaud's failure led him to experiment with the radio

broadcast of Pour en finir avec le iugement de Dieu as a way of

'articulating the Real with voice and words.'

Paule Thevenin, one of the people closest to Artaud in the last two

years of his life stated that the banned radio broadcast Pour en finir avec le

jugement de Dieu was to be the first true representation of the Theater of

Cruelty (Gouhier, 129).

In looking at this radio performance piece as the one major

production that Artaud attempted after Les Cenci. there are immediate

contrasts with the play that had seemed destined in 1935 to be the sole

representation of his vision.

First, that Artaud used the radio as the medium for his message in the

1947 performance seems to be a reversal of Artaud's conviction that the

audience must be immersed directly and physical in the vibrations of sound

with no technological filter for the intended trance-like effect to take place.

It seems that Artaud was interested in the potential for reaching as large an

audience as possible.

94

Second, the performance space is radically changed—that is, all the

imagery must now take place in the minds and the imaginations of the

audience, without the visual effects of movement or 'living hieroglyphs'

in association with the sounds to convey the notions and act on the

participant. The 'network of sound' in which the audience was immersed

for Les Cenci was to be the sole active force.

However, in the aspects of surrounding the audience with sound and

impacting a great number of people with his theater the use of radio

conformed to his vision. He had always seen 'the masses' as the intended

audience for The Theater of Cruelty. His interest in the Mysteries of

medieval religious theater and the Elizabethan drama confirm this aim. His

intention all along had been to transform radically not just the individual,

but culture itself.

The radio broadcast was a failure in certain crucial ways, not

dissimilar to the failure of Les Cenci. First, in being restricted by

limitations imposed by society, the broadcast, like the play, failed to portray

accurately the scope of Artaud's vision. Also, it was generally not received

positively. But unlike Les Cenci, it is clear that Artaud himself did not

view the radio broadcast as being a success 'in the absolute' as he had the

play. After hearing that audiences in a privately arranged broadcast in

95

Washington D.C. had not been favorably impressed, Artaud returned to a

previously held view that the use of technology imposed a filter that

diminished the intended effect of the Theater of Cruelty vision.

La ou est la machine c'est toujours le gouffre et le neant, il y a une interposition technique qui deforme et

annihile ce que Ton a fait... c'est pourquoi je ne toucherai plus jamais a la

Radio.. (Oeuvres completes tome 13, 146).

In this same letter to Paule Thevenin on February 24, 1948, just eight

days before his death, Artaud succinctly reaffirmed his committment to all

the basic principles of his original vision of an active theater that found its

transformational effect in the immersion of the participant in the cruel

necessity of natural force:

[je] me consacrerai desormais exclusivement au theatre tel que je le consols, un theatre de sang, un theatre qui a chaque representation aura fait

gagner corporellement quelque chose aussi bien a celui qui joue qu'a celui qui vient voir

jouer, d'ailleurs on ne joue pas, on agit. Le theatre c'est en realite la genese de la creation. Cela se fera.

96

(Oeuvres completes tome 13, 146).

What explanation can be found for the lack of detail in the descriptions

of a technique for the Theater of Cruelty?

Sur ce principe (of a concrete language in space) nous envisageons de donner un spectacle ou ces moyens d'action directe soient utilises dans leur totalite;...dont la qualite et les suiprenants alliages font partie d'une technique qui ne doit pas etre divulgueee (Le Theatre et son double, 135, emphasis mine).

Artaud addresses the reasons for his lack of clarity sometimes in very

direct terms, but more often in obscure, poetic images.

The first reason Artaud deliberately obscured the descriptions of

technique for a Theater of Cruelty was the practical one of ownership of

ideas. Antonin Artaud had two contradictory sides to his character that

were undeniably in evidence throughout his career On the one hand, he

was passionately uncompromising about his principles, and he expressed

this stance often in dramatic, blunt language and behavior. On the other

hand, he understood the competitiveness of theater. Because of the practical

demands of survival, he saw the necessity of protecting himself from the

risk of plagiarism, and refused to give certain details about his technique,

particularly before the production.

97

Another important reason for the elusiveness in the descriptions of

the technique is based on a principle of his vision: that mystery is an

essential element of poetry, and that exposing thought in the language of

clear ideas destroys its poetic force. This ties closely his vision to the

concept of alchemy. It also confirms the idea that fixed form destroys

poetic force. Artaud's style is occult, and has its roots in both his

essentialist vision and his struggle for self expression through language;

Tout vrai sentiment est en realite intraduisible. L'exprimer c'est le trahir. Mais le traduire c'est le dissimuler. L'expression vraie cache ce qu'elle manifeste...

Tout sentiment puissant provoque en nous I'idee du vide. Et le langange clair qui empeche ce vide, empeche aussi la poesie d'apparaitre dans la pensee.

C'est ainsi que la vraie beaute ne nous frappe jamais directement (Le Theatre et son double ,110, emphasis Artaud's).

A third explanation for Artaud's elusiveness has to do with the

spontaneous moment of creation. The creator of true theater is the staging

director, who uses an intuitive perception to release the forces that bring

about his creation. The author of the theatrical creation is not the author of a

written script, a fixed form which can be repeated and preserved, but rather

creates in the performance. The theater whose language is that of a 'poetry

in space' (Double. 56) has no meaning as written expression. Thus, the

98

creative action of the director and the actors, as well as the set, are

dependent on intuitive intelligence. The moment of creation, a spontaneous

result of the combination of many effects, is unique and never to be

repeated the same way again. Artaud described this unique, vibrational

moment as a form of alchemy:

L'operation theatrale de faire de I'or, par I'immensite des conflits qu'elle provoque, par le nombre prodigieux de forces qu'elle jette I'une contre 1'autre et qu'elle emeut, par cet appel a une sorte de rebrassement essentiel debordant de consequences et surcharge de spiritualite, evoque finalement a 1'esprit une purete absolue et abstraite, apres laquelle il n'y a pas rien, et que Ton pourrait concevoir comme une note unique, une sorte de note limite, happee au vol et qui serait comme la partie organique d'une indescriptible vibration ("Le theatre alchimique" in Le theatre et son double. 78, emphasis mine).

Through the action of theater, Artaud sought to meld the spiritual and

the material and produce 'the organic manifestation of an indescribable

vibration.' Artaud would call this a virtual state because it is a space which

contains the true force of theater, yet has no resolution in the real world.

The assassin on stage reproduces the affective force of death through his

acting, but kills no one.

The elements of time and space are apparent in the concept of

vibration. A vibration exists in both space and time, and could be said to be

a space in time. Through his repeated use of the term vibration in his

99

theories Artaud emphasizes a process of theater rather than a product. As in

alchemy, the product is a manifestation of a spiritual accession, or action.

The value of the gold produced lies in its proof of a metaphysical union,

rather than in its material value.

To expect concrete guidelines of this aspect of Artaud's vision, the

intuitive perception of a moment in space and time where 'the unique and

inextricable fusion of the abstract and the concrete' (Double, 79) would take

place seems an impossible demand. And yet the concept of a metaphysical

transformation through the action of theater is essential to his vision.

Artaud himself described the difficulty in giving objective examples

of such a creative transformation in "La mise en scene et la metaphysique";

Donner des exemples objectifs de cette poesie consecutive aux diverses fa9ons que peuvent avoir un geste, une sonorite, une intonation de s'appuyer avec plus ou moins d'insistance sur telle ou telle partie de I'espace, a tel ou tel moment, me parait aussi difficile que de communiquer avec des mots le sentiment de la qualite particuliere d'un son ou du degre et de la qualite d'une douleur physique. Cela depend de la realisation et ne peut se determiner que sur la scene (Double, 69).

Perhaps the most basic reason for the lack of guidelines for a

theatrical technique is that Artaud had not completed the experiment before

he was committed to an asylum in 1937, nor had he finished either the

100

distillation of a 'pure theater' or the concrete language for his Theater of

Cruelty project when he died in March, 1948.

Antonin Artaud was still in the process of researching and inventing

the elements of the language of a transformational theater when he wrote

the 'Preambule' for his collected works in 1947'

Je suis un genital inne, a y regarder de pres cela veut dire que je ne me suis jamais realise.

Artaud's struggle for self expression resounds strongly in these words

which portray his experience as one of never coming fully into being. It is

clear that for Artaud as a creative artist, essence had to be experienced

through creative expression to realize its full potential.

101

CONCLUSION

For Antonin Artaud, western culture was committing suicide through

the misguided notion that man is godlike because he is greater than nature

rather than divine because he is inseparable from it. Artaud viewed modem

man as striving to create life from ideas, rather than accepting that the

inverse is true. Most perverse for Artaud was that man sought to repress the

primal knowledge of the metaphysical connection between the spiritual and

the material, and reject the cruelty of life as a vital creativity For Artaud,

the loss of this awareness meant existence without meaning, meant the

difference between voyeuristic spectatorship and heroic participation in the

theater of life.

Two aspects of Artaud's life stand out because of their intensity and

because they seem at odds with what some readers perceive as an inherent

nihilism in his work. These are his optimism in humanity and his passion

for life. The first assertion seems to contradict his consistent rejection of

society. It is true that in his writing Artaud violently rejected the social and

ideological structures that support modem culture—nuclear family, science

and technology, capitalism, and art. Yet he saw as an essential part of

humanness an irrepressible need to return to a state of deeper sensibility and

awareness of self in connection with the universe. He believed that people

102

are dying to live again, to be inspired by the ancient truths of life rather than

entertained by the numbing simulacra of modem culture. This belief

reflected his own passion for life and for a return to ancient theater.

Yet coupled with the sometimes surprising optimism and desire for

life was an undeniable despair. Artaud's artistic genius sprang in part from

a deep well of individual torment that both linked him to humanity's

struggle for liberation as well as separated him repeatedly from unity with

self and other. His search for metaphysical transformation in theater clearly

has its roots in this struggle.

Like his life and theories, Artaud's legacy invites controversy His

passion and poetic force inspired many, contemporaries as well as

successive generations, yet his theories have been sometimes interpreted in

ways that are arguably not what Artaud intended. Rarely, for instance, have

theater projects claiming to be inspired by the Theater of Cruelty

incorporated what were the most essential aspects, such as the primacy of

the staging effects over the script, or the integration of the audience in the

performance space. Additionally, determining exactly what his legacy was

proves controversial, since his theories are abstract and were rarely

manifested concretely Finally, one could argue that Artaud's experiment

was never concluded, that the transformation of the spiritual and the

103

concrete never achieved, that metaphysical gold never struck. However, the

fact that these questions are still debated today attests to Artaud's

continuing influence on the search for the essence of theater,

Artaud wrote a post-scriptum for Le theatre de la cruaute, which was

meant to be part of the radio broadcast Pour en finir avec le iugement de

Dieu in 1947;

POST-SCRIPTUM

Qui suis-je? D'ou je viens? Je suis Antonin Artaud et que je le dise comme je sais le dire immediatement vous verrez mon corps actuel voler en eclats et se ramasser sous dix mille aspects notoires un corps neuf ou vous ne pourrez plus jamais m'oublier (Oeuvres Completes, tome 13, 118).

His words indicate that the search for a fixed form for a Theater of

Cruelty will be in vain. Yet his wish to be remembered has been fulfilled.

It is clear that his view of the notorious constellation of the always 'new

body' continues to influence the world of contemporary theater The

104

evidence is on the radio waves (interview with Leopold Dedar Senghor,

FranceCulture, April 2000), the internet pages (check World Wide Web for

Antonin Artaud websites) and the theater stages (Theatre de Saone et Loire,

March 2000): more than fifty years after his death, he is alive worldwide as

the power of his vision still influences not only dramatic theory, but

political and philosophical thought. The legacy of the uniqueness and

passion of his vision, not yet to be forgotten, continues into the third

millenium.

105

Works Consulted

Books

Antonin Artaud. Oeuvres Completes. Tome II. L'evolution du decor,

Theatre Alfred Jarry, Trois oeuvres pour la scene, Deux projets de

mise en scene, Notes sur les Tricheurs de Steve Passeur, Comptes

rendus, A propos d'une piece perdue, A propos de la litterature et

des arts plastiques. Paris: Gallimard, 1961 and 1980.

—. Oeuvres Completes. Tome IV Le theatre et son double, Le theatre

• de Seraphin, Les Cenci. Paris; Editions Gallimard, 1978.

—. Oeuvres Completes. Tome V Autour du Theatre et son double et

des Cenci. Paris; Gallimard, 1964.

— Oeuvres Completes. Tome XII. Artaud Le Momo, la Culture

indienne; Ci-Git. Paris. Gallimard, 1974.

—. Oeuvres Completes. Tome XIII. Van Gogh, le suicide de la societe,

Pour enfinir avec le jugement de Dieu, le Theatre de la cruaute.

Paris: Gallimard, 1974.

— Le Theatre et son double, suivi de Le theatre de Seraphin. Paris;

Gallimard, Collection Folio/Essais, 1964

Barber, C.L. Creating Elizabethan Trasedv. Chicago and London:

106

The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Bersani, Jacques; Autrand, Michel; Lecarme, Jacques; Vercier, Bruno.

La Litterature en France depuis 1945 Paris. Bordas, 1970.

Borie, Monique. Antonin Artaud. le theatre et le retour aux sources.

Une approche anthropologique. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1989

Bouthors-Paillare, Catherine. Antonin Artaud: L'enonciation ou Tepreuve

de la cruaute. Geneve; Librairie Droz S.A., 1997

Brau, Jean-Louis. Antonin Artaud. Paris. Edition de la Table Ronde,

1971.

Chemana, Roland. Dictionnaire de la Psvchoanalvse. Paris: Larousse,

1993.

A

Derrida, Jacques. L'Ecriture et la difference. Paris. Editions du seuil,

1967.

Deleuze, Gilles. Dialogues. Paris: Flammarion, 1996.

A

—. Pourparlers. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. L'Anti-oedipe. Paris: Les Editions de

minuit, 1972.

— A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis:

University of Minneapolis Press, 1987

Diamond, Elin. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater

107

New York: Routledge, 1997

Durozoi, Gerard. Artaud. Talienation et la folie. Paris: Librairie

Larousse, 1972.

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization. London: Routledge, 1989

—. Power and Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

— "Theatrum Philosophicum". Langage, Counter-Memory. Practice:

Selected Essays and Interviews. Barcelona. Anagram, 1981.

Goodall, Jane. Artaud and the Gnostic Drama. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1994.

Gouhier, Henri. Antonin Artaud et FEssence du Theatre. Paris: Librairie

Philosophique J. Vrin, 1974.

Grossman, Evelyne. Artaud/Jovce: Le corps et le texte. Paris:

Nathan, 1996.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Jacques Lacan. A feminist introduction. London:

Routledge, 1990.

—. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington.

Indiana UP, 1994

Hard wick, Elizabeth, intr. A Susan Sontag Reader New York:

Vintage Books, 1983.

108

Hubert, Marie-Claude. Le Theatre. Paris: Armand Colin Editeur, 1988.

Jotterand, Franck. Le Nouveau Theatre Americain. Paris: Seuil, 1970.

Kristeva, Julia. Pouvoirs de I'horreur: Essais sur Fabjection. Paris:

Seuil, 1980.

—. La revolution du langage poetique. Paris: Seuil, 1974

Maeder, Thomas. Antonin Artaud. Paris: Plon, 1978.

Sollers, Philippe, dir. Artaud. Paris: Union Generale d'Editions, 1973

Sontag, Susan. A la rencontre d'Antonin Artaud. Paris: Christian

Bourgois, 1973.

Thevenin, Paule. Antonin Artaud, ce desepere qui vous parle. Paris.

Seuil, coll. "Essais" , 1993.

Thevenin, Paule. Preface. Le TheMre et son double. By Antonin Artaud.

Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1964. N. pag.

Thevenin, Paule and Jacques Derrida. Artaud, Dessins et Portraits.

Paris; Editions Gallimard, 1986. First printing, Munich: Shirmer/

Mosel, 1986.

Virmaux, Alain. Antonin Artaud et le theatre. Paris: Editions Seghers,

1970.

Articles

109

Artaud, Antonin. "Notes sur mes dessins et remarques sur la peinture

surrealiste en general." Tel Quel 20 (1965).

Bene, Carmelo. "L'energie sans cesse renouvelee de I'Utopie" Travail

Theatral 27 (1977): 61-89.

Chin, Daryl. "The Antonin Artaud Film Project." Performing Arts

Journal. 56. (1997): 23.

Dasgupta, Guatam. "Remembering Artaud." Performing Arts Journal. 56.

(1997): 1-6.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "Comment se faire un corps sans

organes?" Minuit 10 (1974).

Deleuze, Gilles. "Le Schizophrene et le mot." Critique Aug.-Sept. (1968):

255

Finter, Helga. "Antonin Artaud and the Impossible Theater* The Legacy

of the Theater of Cruelty " TDR (Cambridge. Mass.) 41 (1997):

15-41

Ffrench, Patrick. "'Tel Quel'and surrealism; are-evaluation. Has the

avant-garde become a theory?" The Romantic Review 88.1

(1997): 189-97

Goodall, Jane. "The Plague and its Powers in Artaudian Theater "

110

Modem Drama. 33 4 (1990): 529-42.

Jouve, Pierre-Jean. "Les Cenci d'Antonin Artaud." NRF June (1935) and

Magazine litteraire 65 June (1972).

Kubiak, Anthony. "Splitting the Difference: Performance and Its Double

in American Culture. TDR (Cambridge. Mass.) 42.14 (1998): 91.

Marc-Vigier, Jacqueline. "Antonin Artaud et le Theatre Grec" Revue des

Sciences Humaines (1970?).

Papin, Liliane. "Theatres de la non-representation." The French Review

64 4.(1991): 667-75.

Schramm, Helmar. "The open book of alchemy in/on the mute language of

theater' 'theatricality' as a key for current theater/research.

Theater Research International 20.2 (1995): 156-65

Thiher, Allen. "Jacques Derrida's Reading of Artaud: La Parole souflee

and La Cloture de la representation." The French Review

52.4. (1984). 503-8.

Wang, Xiaoying. "The body that puts the mind on trial." differences:

A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 9.1 (1997): 95-129

Bibliographies

111

Baker, William and Kenneth Womack. "Recent work in Critical Theory."

Style 29.4 (1995): 568-670.

Pottie, Lisa M. "Modem drama studies: an annual bibliography".

Modem Drama 41.2 (1998): pl81-303

Encvcopedias and Dictionaries

Beaumarchais, Jean-Pierre de, Daniel Couty and Alain Rey Dictionnaires

des litteratures de langue francaise. 4 vols. Paris: Bordas, 1994.

Mitterand, Henri. Dictionnaire des Grandes Oeuvres de la Litterature

francaise. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert Collection Les Usuels,

1992.

The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia. 2 vols.

New York: The Viking Press, 1953 and 1960.

Film

Mordillat, Gerard and Jerome Prieur. The Antonin Artaud Film Project.

"La veritable histoire d'Artaud le Momo." 3 hours.

"En compagnie d'Antonin Artaud." 93 min. 1993.11

112

Sound Recordings

Dimanche, Andre, ed. Antonin Artuad. Four CD set. Radiophonic

works from 1946-1948. 1946: two recordings for Club D'Essai, a

Parisian radio station: June 8, Les malades et les medecins: July 16

Alienation et magie noire. 1948: Pour en finir avec le iugement de

dieu for Radio France with Marie Casares, Roger Blin, Paule

Thevenin. The INA,1995

World Wide Web

Hubert, Amaud. Antonin Artaud. 15 Aug. 2000.

<http;//www.offroads.com/Artaud/links.html>

113